The Unit­ed States has con­firmed plans to ex­pand trav­el re­stric­tions to 36 ad­di­tion­al coun­tries—in­clud­ing four in the Caribbean—ac­cord­ing to a State De­part­ment brief­ing on Tues­day.

Spokesper­son Tam­my Bruce did not con­firm any spe­cif­ic coun­tries named in a June 14 Wash­ing­ton Post re­port but ad­dressed the pol­i­cy's frame­work. The Post cit­ed a leaked memo signed by Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio that re­port­ed­ly in­cludes An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lu­cia among the coun­tries that could face new visa bans or oth­er trav­el lim­i­ta­tions.

Bruce said the pol­i­cy is based on a re­view of se­cu­ri­ty and co­op­er­a­tion stan­dards, not ge­og­ra­phy. “The ac­tu­al lo­ca­tion of the coun­try is not a fac­tor,” she said. “These are about very spe­cif­ic as­pects—whether or not the Unit­ed States feels it can trust the in­for­ma­tion we re­ly on those coun­tries for, to de­ter­mine whether or not they’ll get a visa.”

The Post re­port­ed that the memo in­struct­ed US diplo­mats to give the gov­ern­ments of the af­fect­ed coun­tries 60 days to meet up­dat­ed bench­marks, with an ini­tial ac­tion plan due by 8 a.m. Wednes­day. Con­cerns re­port­ed­ly in­clude lack of re­li­able iden­ti­ty doc­u­men­ta­tion, visa over­stay rates, fail­ure to co­op­er­ate with US im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment, and the sale of cit­i­zen­ship with­out res­i­den­cy re­quire­ments.

Bruce re­ject­ed re­ports that a dead­line had al­ready passed. “That’s not cor­rect,” she said. “They will have a con­sid­er­able amount of time to rec­ti­fy what­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion is that the State De­part­ment has de­ter­mined is af­fect­ing the na­ture of our trust in how we is­sue a visa.”

In re­sponse to the re­ports, the Gov­ern­ment of Saint Kitts and Nevis is­sued a state­ment on Tues­day deny­ing that it had re­ceived any of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the US re­gard­ing trav­el re­stric­tions. “No of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence or com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been re­ceived from the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment, whether through our Em­bassy, Con­sular rep­re­sen­ta­tives, or any oth­er chan­nel,” the state­ment said. It added that the gov­ern­ment had “tak­en note of re­ports now cir­cu­lat­ing on var­i­ous plat­forms” and ac­knowl­edged that “the mere cir­cu­la­tion of such a re­port is con­cern­ing enough.”

The Saint Kitts and Nevis gov­ern­ment said it is “ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing its diplo­mat­ic and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to de­ter­mine the source, cred­i­bil­i­ty, and ve­rac­i­ty of the claims now in cir­cu­la­tion,” and as­sured that “the pro­tec­tion of our cit­i­zens, at home and abroad, is a top pri­or­i­ty.” The gov­ern­ment al­so urged the pub­lic to re­ly on of­fi­cial chan­nels for ac­cu­rate and time­ly in­for­ma­tion.

Bruce, ref­er­enc­ing Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 14161, said the US re­mains fo­cused on pro­tect­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty through its visa process. “We are com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing our na­tion’s cit­i­zens by up­hold­ing the high­est stan­dards of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and pub­lic safe­ty,” she said.

The Post al­so re­port­ed that coun­tries will­ing to ac­cept de­por­tees or sign a “safe third coun­try” agree­ment could ad­dress some of the list­ed con­cerns.

This fol­lows a June 4 pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion that in­tro­duced full trav­el re­stric­tions on sev­er­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen, and par­tial re­stric­tions on oth­ers such as Cu­ba, Venezuela, and Sier­ra Leone.

Bruce said the Sec­re­tary of State would de­ter­mine which coun­tries re­main on the list and con­firmed the re­view process is on­go­ing. “The goal is that we can all move for­ward, so that peo­ple can come to the coun­try,” she said.