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The global public health community is grappling with COVID-2019, a respiratory disease outbreak caused by a novel coronavirus originating from Wuhan, China in late December 2019. A number of countries implemented citizenship-based travel restrictions in late January and early February as an initial response to the outbreak, barring entry to foreign nationals who had previously been in China to prevent the importation of the virus. By early March, when the World Health Organization (WHO) formally declared the outbreak to be a global pandemic, these countries were still relying on travel restrictions as a means of infection control. These travel restrictions constituted restrictions or outright bans on the entry of foreign nationals with a particular citizenship-such policies tend to be popular with a general public with limited public health knowledge. However, travel restrictions are ineffective as an infection control measure and may do more harm than good, depriving the public of its right to health. Furthermore, travel restrictions implemented under the guise of public health policy have historically been used to target migrants and racial and ethnic minorities, violating their rights to nondiscrimination and equal treatment. As states rush to balance public health with politics in their response to this global pandemic, they are sidelining human rights rather than protecting them