Trump to American travelers: Stay out of the United States

Administration bars U.S. citizens who visited Congo from boarding flights home for 21 days, even as CDC says risk to Americans remains low

The Trump administration is telling some Americans abroad that they cannot get on a commercial airplane to come home.

Under extraordinary travel restrictions imposed in response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, U.S. citizens and nationals who have been in the sprawling Central African nation during the previous 21 days are prohibited from boarding commercial flights bound for the United States.

The prohibition applies even to an American who merely passed through a Congolese airport aboard an airplane and never stepped off the aircraft.

The government’s instructions are blunt: Stay outside the United States until the 21-day period expires.

“Travelers, including Americans, who have been in DRC within 21 days of their flight will not be allowed to board commercial flights with U.S. destinations,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. “All U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals who have been in DRC should plan to remain outside DRC for 21 days before entering the United States.”

For an administration that has wrapped itself in “America First” rhetoric, the practical message to Americans caught on the wrong side of an international public health emergency is remarkable: America first — unless you are an American trying to get back into America.

The restriction is even more extraordinary because the CDC itself says the likelihood that the current Ebola outbreak will spread to the United States is “very low,” that the danger of further transmission would remain low even if an infected person were diagnosed here, and that no cases associated with the outbreak have been confirmed in the United States.

The policy nevertheless imposes a sweeping geographical restriction rather than limiting the commercial-flight prohibition to people known to have been exposed to Ebola or to those who traveled through the areas experiencing the most severe outbreaks.

An American who spent time in an unaffected portion of a country roughly the size of Western Europe is subject to the restriction. So is a passenger whose connecting flight merely touched down at a Congolese airport.

The CDC says the rule applies “regardless of whether they disembarked or stayed on the airplane.”

The government has separately expanded its disease-control authority to lawful permanent residents. In May, the Department of Health and Human Services revised its regulations under 42 CFR Part 71.40 so that the government’s authority to suspend entry could be applied to green card holders. The CDC said the change allowed it to prevent lawful permanent residents who had recently been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan from entering during the emergency.

The restrictions represent a striking escalation from the administration’s initial response.

On May 21, the CDC said U.S. citizens, nationals and lawful permanent residents who had recently been in the affected countries would be permitted to enter the United States but would be routed through Washington Dulles International Airport for enhanced screening. One day later, the administration announced that it had expanded its regulatory authority over lawful permanent residents. The government’s current guidance now tells Americans who have been in the DRC that they cannot board commercial flights to the United States during the 21-day period.

The administration says the extraordinary measures are necessary because Ebola can incubate for as long as 21 days, allowing infected people to travel without symptoms. Its Aug. 12 order cited the case of an infected physician who traveled internationally from Congo before becoming ill and was diagnosed after reaching France.

That is a genuine and increasingly grave public health threat.

The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak has become catastrophic. More than 6,000 infections have been confirmed in Congo, and government figures released Wednesday put the death toll above 3,000. There is no approved vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain, although experimental vaccines and treatments are being developed.

But the severity of an epidemic abroad does not erase questions about the proportionality of measures imposed on Americans returning home — particularly when less restrictive tools are available.

The administration itself demonstrates that point with travelers from Uganda and South Sudan.

U.S. citizens and nationals who have recently been in either country, but not the DRC, are not categorically prohibited from boarding flights home. Instead, their travel is routed through designated U.S. airports where they undergo enhanced public health screening.

That raises an unavoidable question: If screening, monitoring, testing and designated airports can be used to protect the public from travelers arriving from Uganda and South Sudan, why is a blanket 21-day commercial-airline exclusion necessary for every American who has set foot — or merely landed aboard an aircraft — anywhere in the DRC?

The CDC’s own public health guidance describes an extensive system for assessing travelers after arrival, educating them about symptoms and monitoring them through state, tribal, local and territorial health authorities. The agency says Customs and Border Protection will notify it when American citizens or nationals arrive at a U.S. airport, seaport or land border within 21 days of leaving Congo so health officials can conduct an initial assessment.

That provision also exposes an important limitation in describing the measure as an absolute ban on Americans “returning” to their country.

The administration is preventing covered Americans from boarding ordinary commercial flights to the United States, but its own guidance anticipates that citizens may reach American ports of entry through other means and provides procedures for handling them when they do.

For most Americans stranded thousands of miles away in Central Africa, however, that legal distinction may provide little practical comfort.

A U.S. passport normally means that its holder has a country to return to. Under the Trump administration’s Ebola policy, an American who traveled through Congo can find that the document is insufficient to get aboard the airplane that would actually take him home.

A country trapped between epidemic and war

The restrictions fall most heavily on people leaving a nation already devastated by disease, displacement and armed conflict.

Eastern Congo has endured decades of warfare fueled by ethnic tensions, regional rivalries and competition for enormous deposits of cobalt, copper, gold and other valuable minerals. Rwanda-backed M23 rebels captured Goma in January 2025 and Bukavu the following month, dramatically expanding their control in eastern Congo.

The conflict is rooted partly in the unresolved aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Rwanda has long cited the presence in eastern Congo of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR — a Hutu armed group with links to perpetrators of the genocide — as a national security threat and justification for intervention.

The Congolese government, meanwhile, has accused Rwanda of using that threat as a pretext for supporting M23 and extending its influence over mineral-rich Congolese territory.

President Donald Trump sought to cast Washington as the peacemaker. Presidents Félix Tshisekedi of Congo and Paul Kagame of Rwanda formally signed the U.S.-facilitated Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity on Dec. 4, 2025. The agreements called for peaceful relations, security cooperation and regional economic integration, including investment in mining and infrastructure.

But agreements signed beneath Washington chandeliers have not magically erased the violence on the ground. International governments subsequently stressed that implementation required an end to hostilities, neutralization of the FDLR, withdrawal of the Rwanda Defence Force and respect for Congo’s territorial integrity.

Into that cauldron came Ebola.

The outbreak has spread through six Congolese provinces and become the deadliest Ebola epidemic in the country’s history, according to government figures. Insecurity has made containment considerably more difficult, while thousands of infected people have overwhelmed an already fragile health system.

The humanitarian logic would seem to demand more international assistance, more epidemiologists, more laboratories, more protective equipment, more treatment facilities and more resources devoted to extinguishing the epidemic where it is raging.

Instead, one conspicuous element of the American response is a rule telling Americans who have been anywhere in Congo that the commercial route home is closed for three weeks.

There is a legitimate public health argument for extraordinary precautions. Ebola is deadly. The Bundibugyo strain can incubate without symptoms. The epidemic in Congo is enormous, and allowing an infected traveler to enter the United States without detection would create obvious risks.

But public health policy is not exempt from scrutiny merely because the disease involved is frightening.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern in May but advised against closing borders, instead emphasizing isolation, monitoring and cross-border screening.

And the CDC acknowledges that the risk to the American public remains low.

That juxtaposition is impossible to ignore.

The government of the United States possesses one of the world’s most sophisticated disease-surveillance systems. It has designated airports, isolation facilities, epidemiologists, laboratories, contact-tracing capabilities and the authority to monitor travelers after arrival.

Yet Americans who have been anywhere in Congo are being told that none of that is sufficient to let them board a commercial airplane home until Day 22.

The policy therefore deserves more than bureaucratic acceptance simply because it appears beneath the reassuring language of “public health.”

It deserves congressional scrutiny. It deserves legal scrutiny. And Americans deserve an explanation of why their government concluded that the appropriate response to a deadly epidemic abroad includes preventing its own citizens — including people with no known Ebola exposure and even passengers who never left a connecting aircraft — from boarding a commercial flight back to their own country.

The administration calls it a temporary travel restriction.

For an American standing at an airport thousands of miles from home with a valid U.S. passport and an airline ticket that the U.S. government says cannot be used, there is a considerably simpler description:

Keep out.