Abdallh Khadra’s three-year-old daughter Muna has gone to bed thousands of miles away from him just about every evening for the past 3 months. Her pink Barbie bed back home in North Carolina lays empty.
Khadra’s fight to get Muna back took a desperate turn Friday when President Trump signed an executive order to instate an immediate travel ban on refugees and men and women traveling to the U.S. with visas from seven majority Muslim countries, which includes Syria, where Muna was born.
“We don’t believe that we can’t get her,” Khadra said. “We have to get her.”
Khadra fled his property nation of Syria immediately after speaking out against the Assad regime. He was vetted and cleared for U.S. entry in 2011 on a religious function visa, and his household joined him in 2013.
On an October trip to see loved ones in Lebanon, Muna was the only member of his family denied entry back to the U.S., he says, due to the fact of a visa snafu. She has been living with her grandmother ever since, but on Monday, he says he was told his daughter is now “ineligible” for U.S. entry.
“This is heartbreaking, we can’t believe this occurred,” he stated. “What will a three-year-old child, what threat would she pose?”
This previous week alone, more than 800 refugees have been on their way to the U.S., according to an estimate from the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees. The executive order by President Trump on Friday changed almost everything in an immediate.
“This policy in regard with my loved ones — it is breaking my household, it is breaking our hearts,” Khadra said.
The order bars admission to the U.S. of all folks with non-immigrant or immigrant visas from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days. It also bars entry to all refugees from anyplace in the globe for 120 days, and locations an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.
Abruptly, people’s lives have been held in limbo. On Saturday, a senior Division of Homeland Security official told ABC News that 375 travelers had been impacted by the executive order at airports across the nation.
Inside that group, 109 men and women have been in transit and then denied entry to the U.S., 173 had been denied entry to the U.S. prior to boarding their flights in a foreign port, and 81 were granted waivers mainly because of their legal permanent resident or particular immigrant visa status.
Division of Homeland Safety officials on Tuesday mentioned that 872 refugees will be allowed to enter the U.S. this week, whilst defending President Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees.
A quantity of travelers to the U.S., like children, were detained upon landing. Some on these incoming flights were barred from entering the country at all, including Fuad Sharef Suleman, who had risked his life working with the U.S. government as a former subcontractor and had to return to Iraq in spite of receiving a visa to enter the nation.
“I never know what to do. Due to the fact I sold my home. I quit my job. My wife quit her job. And little ones left school,” he stated.
On Monday, President Trump fired acting U.S. Lawyer General Sally Yates for refusing to defend his immigration order just after she stated she was not convinced it was “lawful.” In a statement, the White House said Yates “betrayed the Division of Justice” and was “weak on borders” and replaced her as acting lawyer basic with by Dana Boente, the U.S. Lawyer for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Abdallh Khadra was vetted. He has been living in the U.S. for six years, coming into the U.S. as an imam on a legal religious workers visa and later applying for political asylum. He mentioned he loves this country but does not believe this policy will abate terror.
“This kind of choice, it will only market hate and worry and it will not solve the challenge of extremists,” he mentioned. “Just the other day, that Canadian white man, he entered the mosque in Quebec and killed … people whilst they were praying … so we do not say, ‘White males are terrorists.’ That is just foolish. That is pretty unjust and quite unfair. This choice is quite discriminatory, quite unjust, incredibly inhumane.”
Khadra was among those protesting the ban in Raleigh, North Carolina, like thousands of others around the nation from New York, under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, to the gates of the White House and at several important airports.
Around the globe, just as with the Women’s March demonstrations the weekend just before, men and women in other nations joined in. A reported 10,000 anti-Trump protesters took to the streets in the United Kingdom. Outrage was also expressed in Hollywood, where a number of actors voiced their opposition to the executive order in the course of their Screen Actors Guild award speeches on Sunday evening.
And in a uncommon move, just days into a new presidency, former President Obama spoke out with some harsh words for President Trump, saying he fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against men and women since of their faith or religion.
But there is also a sturdy chorus of voices across the U.S. that are in support of the travel ban.
“Take care of our own initial, and then take care of other people,” Lou Colon of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, told WNEP. “It’s just like … when a plane goes into a crash mode, first you have to place on your mask to support your kid.”
“I think we need, initial and foremost, to retain our nation protected,” Valery Brussat told ABC Milwaukee affiliate WISN 12 News.
But hours soon after issuing the executive order, the White Residence began to stroll back aspect of that sweeping edict, now saying green card holders – permanent legal residents — will be permitted to re-enter the country.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended the policy on Monday, telling reporters, “I’m sorry that some people may possibly have had to wait a tiny even though, but I consider the president would substantially rather know that he’s not placing a call to a person who was killed simply because a person was let into this country to commit a terrorist act.”
The order grants some exceptions, providing priority to refugees from religious minorities, like Christians living in majority Muslim countries.
Nermeen Arastu, a clinical law professor and attorney, mentioned she believes the mandate is unethical and unlawful.
“We’ve noticed post-9/11 that in the name of security our country has permitted itself to erode many of its values,” Arastu stated. “If the U.S. is now going to prioritize that they are going to take refugees that are Christian more than refugees that are Muslim that in and of itself is discriminating based on religion.”
But President Trump claimed the ban had nothing at all to do with religion, telling reporters, “It’s not a Muslim ban, but we’re totally prepared and it’s been functioning out quite nicely.”
The executive order unleashed a crush of bipartisan criticism, from Democratic lawmakers protesting on the methods of the Supreme Court Monday evening to Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham writing in a joint statement: “It is clear from the confusion at our airports across the nation that President Trump’s executive order was not appropriately vetted… In the end, we worry this executive order will turn into a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.”
President Trump fired back at them on Twitter saying, “John McCain and Lindsey Graham… really should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border safety alternatively of constantly looking to commence Globe War III.”
The president later adding on Twitter, “If the ban was announced with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our nation in the course of that week. A lot of terrible ‘dudes’ out there.”
Now, people today like Sufyan, who asked that his final name not be utilized, remain caught in the crossfire of this debate. He worked as a translator for the U.S. Army in Iraq and worked with the American forces for seven years, and mentioned he risked his life each day for risky assignments.
“I nonetheless don’t forget when my brother got kidnapped simply because they were considering that he was me,” he stated. “It is a harmful place but it is a will have to.”
He got out of Iraq working with a specific immigration via, which allowed him to get a green card. But for now, those like him who risks their lives to aid American forces or corporations would not be allowed into the U.S.
Sufyan now lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and 3 youngsters. His youngest daughter is an American, born in the U.S. He mentioned the president’s executive order is tough for him.
“Don’t judge 95 % of the excellent people the similar as 5 % bad persons,” he said.
For Khadra, his foremost concern is the security of his small girl, still stranded half a world away.
“For me personally, I want my daughter back,” he said.
ABC News’ Ely Brown and Lauren Effron contributed to this report
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