President Trump’s administration is halting all non-essential travel at the United States’ southern border with Mexico and northern border with Canada beginning Saturday, March 21.

During a press conference on Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf announced that the U.S. would be closing off its southern and northern borders for all non-essential travel to stop the spread of the Chinese coronavirus.

Non-essential travel at the southern and northern border includes tourism and recreational travel.

“We’ve reached an agreement with both Canada and Mexico to limit non-essential travel across our land borders,” Wolf said. “Let me be clear that neither of these agreements with Canada or Mexico applies to lawful trade or commerce. Essential commercial activities will not be impacted.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order means the U.S. will suspend entry at its land borders to foreign nationals who have no proper travel documentation, cannot verify their identity, or have no medical documentation. These foreign nationals will be immediately returned to Canada, Mexico, or another country from which they arrived.

Wolf said DHS has been apprehending foreign nationals from more than 120 countries, the overwhelming majority of which have confirmed coronavirus cases.

“Many of these individuals arrive with little or no identity, travel, or medical documentation — making public health risks determinations all but impossible,” Wolf said. “The outbreak on our southern border would likely increase the strain on health systems in our border communities, taking away life-saving resources from American citizens.”

Pompeo said the State Department has issued a Level 4 global travel advisory for U.S. citizens, requesting that all Americans not travel internationally at this time. U.S. citizens abroad, Pompeo said, should return home immediately unless they plan to stay abroad for an extended period of time.

As Breitbart News reported, nearly 151,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border since October 2019 from 72 affected countries. Since then, 1,657 Chinese nationals have been apprehended at the southern border. About 341 of these Chinese nationals sought to enter the U.S. illegally just within the last few months.

At the U.S.-Canada border, nearly 10,400 foreign nationals were deemed inadmissible or apprehended in January and February. Likewise, about 6.3 million noncitizens were legally admitted to the U.S. from the northern border since January 1, before Canada’s global travel ban was implemented.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.