Order halting ban allows Dearborn family to reunite
A federal judge’s ruling that effectively halted President Donald Trump’s travel ban nationwide is allowing a Dearborn husband to reunite with his wife and baby daughter who have been stuck in Qatar since the order took effect.
Abubaker Hassan of Dearborn, who told the News this week that the travel ban had separated him from his wife, Sara Hamad and their baby daughter, Alma, when she went to visit family in Qatar since November, said they boarded a flight in Qatar and arrived home Sunday morning.
“Thank god, everything went fine,” said Hassan, who is in the United States on a J-1 visa, which allows immigrants to participate in work- and study-based exchange visitor programs. He is a doctor in his second year of postgraduate training in internal medicine at the Detroit Medical Center.
Hassan said in a twist, after his wife boarded the plane in Qatar, “they had to turn back.”
“It was an issue with the plane this time,” he said, and not related to the since-halted ban for refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. Trump also suspended nearly all refugee admissions for 120 days and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely.
With the baby sleeping safely back in their Dearborn home and his wife trying to adjust to the time change, Hassan said his family was doing well.
“It was like a nightmare,” he said of the ban that swept up his family. “I’m starting to appreciate the simple, joyful times.”
Visa holders hurry to board flights to US amid reprieve
Travel ban suspended, DOJ moves to appeal
Duggan reaffirms city's support for Syrian refugees
Meanwhile, the Arab American Civil Rights League in Dearborn, which filed a federal legal challenge, said Saturday that the order issued by a federal judge in Seattle has them telling those able to travel to do so. The group, in its lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Detroit, asked a judge to declare the entire emergency immigration order unconstitutional.
“What we’re doing now is instructing people who can travel immediately to the United States to basically go ahead and do that before anything further happens,” AACRL Director Rula Aoun told the News.
Aoun said one entire family intends to fly back from Egypt on Sunday. Another woman in Egypt, who had been denied a visa, is now booking her flight to come as soon as possible, she said.
She’s talked with about a dozen individuals affected by Trump’s executive order. Some, she said, have had visas revoked and others continue to wait for them to be issued. One Yemeni family, she noted, decided to travel here from Egypt and left their children, who had not yet received visas, behind with relatives.
Travel ban suspended, DOJ moves to appeal
Aoun’s group is planning to continue with strategy talks on Sunday to see whether people included in their lawsuit have been taken care of and what issues still remain.
The Friday ruling, she said, is a success so far.
Trump lashes out at judge over travel ban ruling
“But still there’s some uncertainty about what’s going to follow,” she said. “We don’t know if it will move forward from here or end up to basically what it was like when the order was first put in place.”
In Seattle on Friday U.S. District Judge James Robart issued an order blocking Trump’s ban on admitting travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries or refugees. The move however has led to confusion Saturday with those who finally got visas to come to America.
On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it won’t direct airlines to keep visa-holders covered by the Trump order from boarding U.S.-bound planes.
An internal email circulated among Homeland Security officials Friday night told employees to comply with the judge’s ruling. However, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad said Saturday that they’re still awaiting guidance on what to tell Iraqis waiting to see if their visa restrictions had changed.
The judge’s order was a victory for Washington and Minnesota, which had challenged Trump’s directive. Robart issued a temporary restraining order, ruling the states had standing.
Also Friday, a federal judge in Detroit issued a permanent order to ensure protections for U.S. residents traveling to and from the United States in the wake of the travel ban.
And although the White House took the same action on Wednesday, by clarifying the executive order doesn’t apply to lawful permanent residents, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts issued a restraining order for the same section of the ban, in response to legal challenges filed by AACRL.
Roberts barred the administration from enforcing two sections of the executive order, clearing the way for entry of those plaintiffs, as well as “all other lawful permanent residents of the United States who are similarly situated.”
Detroit News Staff Writer Charles E. Ramirez and Associated Press contributed