The holiday season—everyone's favorite time of year. Family and friends travel far and near, gathering to observe the religious holidays, exchange presents, and ring in the new year. But in 2020, a year marked by a global pandemic, travelers had to tread carefully. Besides CDC warnings of the health risks associated with holiday travel, many foreign nationals located inside the United States had to carefully navigate a myriad of unprecedentedly restrictive travel bans and immigration restrictions. For some who traveled abroad, for personal reasons or otherwise, they are now facing incredible obstacles in returning to the United States, causing massive disruptions to their lives and the operations of their employers.

Over the course of 2020, the Trump administration leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic to impede travel into the United States by foreign nationals as part of his established agenda to significantly reduce legal immigration to the United States. These impediments the president created can be categorized into three types: region-specific travel bans, person-specific travel bans and administrative slowdowns. Each of these play an enormous role in limiting access to the immigration system.