Trump?s Travel Ban Forever Changed The Lives Of Muslims Around The World

In 2018, Saleh petitioned for a visa so his son — Ayman, who lived in Aden, Yemen, and was 20 at the time — could come to the United States to seek treatment for a congenital heart condition. Ayman’s application was still being processed when he died at a Yemeni hospital in May 2021, during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan.A year-long HuffPost investigation found hundreds of cases of Trump’s ban changing the lives of Muslims, both inside the United States and around the world. Some gave up on coming to the U.S. and instead relocated to another country, while others have been trapped in war zones...HuffPost collected data throughout 2021 on people who have been affected by the Trump-era travel ban, which included reaching out to American organizations that work with Muslim communities, putting out open calls on social media, and contacting lawyers and activists. In nearly 300 cases, or one-third of our data, the family or person impacted faced more than one extreme hardship due to the ban.There were 11 cases like Saleh’s, in which separation meant never again seeing a loved one because they died while the ban was in place.President Joe Biden signed an executive order formally ending the travel ban as one of his first acts as president, a move immigration groups and affected families applauded. And in March 2021, the U.S. State Department announced that people who had been denied visas due to the ban could seek a revised decision or reapply.But those applicants joined a backlog of nearly half a million cases and a painfully long process that the pandemic has further slowed. “Even though the policies are now gone, you do see the effects continuing to ripple out in people’s lives for years.” One Family’s Fight Saleh came to New York, where his own father lived as a citizen, as a green card holder in 1995. His children were suddenly alone and very far away.Trump had just been sworn in as president, and quickly made good on his campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” On Jan. 27, 2017, just days after his inauguration, he signed a directive placing a 90-day ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court gets the final say, and it was extremely disappointing and distressing that they blessed what everybody knew was just blatant discrimination, motivated by President Trump’s very clearly expressed anti-Muslim animus.”As the legal battles dragged on around the U.S., Saleh sought legal help to petition for visas for his children back in Yemen. Eligibility relies on several factors, including the child’s year of birth, the immigration status of both parents, and the number of years a citizen parent has resided in the U.S. Omar and Bayen qualified for U.S. citizenship, but were unable to secure visas to board a plane to the U.S. Fares and Akram were left in limbo awaiting interview appointments at the embassy in Djibouti so that they could enter as permanent residents. The ban on Muslim-majority countries including Yemen and Iran further complicated the vetting process and led to more denials, she added.Permanent residence visas issued to people from Iran fell by 81% between 2016 and 2018, the first year the travel ban was fully implemented, according to MPI. In 2017, she enrolled in a program to earn her doctorate in biomedical engineering, in hopes of returning to the university as a professor.That same year, Abbasnezhad threw her name in the American Diversity Immigrant Visa Program lottery, hoping to immigrate to the U.S. and continue her studies. Tens of thousands would have to reenter the lottery and may never get the chance to come to the U.S. Diversity visa seekers from African countries were also impacted, as Trump expanded the travel ban in 2020 to include Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. Organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Iranian American Council Action are lobbying the Biden administration to allow past lottery winners to obtain a visa.“The U.S. has made a commitment to offering these visas to these people who would benefit tremendously from it, only to have a kind of snatched away by a discriminatory immigration system,” said Ryan Costello, the policy director at NIAC. His family back in the U.S. begged him to return, but Saleh was not going to board a flight without his children.Finally, on Nov. 22, 2021, Saleh’s children were granted visas to enter the U.S., two as American citizens and two as permanent residents. Saleh’s children have seen more than most adults, having escaped death too many times for their short lifetimes.“Holding onto any hope while in Yemen was hard,” Omar said.