The reckless, impulsive Executive Order that President Trump threw out into the world last Friday evening has created absolute chaos in every airport around the country, and indeed around the globe.
Federal agencies were not consulted during the crafting of the EO that placed a ban on the resettlement of refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries. That means that federal agents, the people charged with carrying out the sweeping ban, have not been trained in what it all means.
The legal confusion will slowly be teased out through the country’s court system. In the meantime, hundreds of families have been affected. Thousands of people here and abroad are living with desperate anxiety about where they will find themselves in three months.
One of the people most severely affected is Mohammad Abu-Khadra of Jordan. The 16 year old public high school student comes from Jordan. That happens to be one of the countries in the mostly Muslim Middle East that was not on President Trump’s list of banned countries.
Not only that, but Mohammad is not a refugee. He has a legal visa and is in the United States legally and with all of the proper documentation.
The young student had gone back to Jordan last week because he needed to renew his visa. He flew home and expected to come right back and pick up his life in Katy, Texas, where he lives with his older brother, Rami.
Rami is a Green Card holder and has lived in the U.S. for five years.
To Mohammad’s surprise, when he arrived back at Houston’s airport Saturday, he was met with officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection who were trying to work out the details of the new Executive Order. They detained the teen for about 48 hours, according to his brother and lawyer for the family.
He was then sent to Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter in Chicago. His brother says that Mohammad hasn’t been able to use his cell phone or computer to communicate since his arrival.
The brothers are being supported and aided by the ACLU, which says that this is the only case it knows of a young person with a visa being detained in this way. It is apparent that the team of Trump and his boss, Steve Bannon, has yet to clarify what it meant when it wrote the troubling order.
H/T Shaun King for this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GzX0OvhlcA
Featured image by North Charleston via Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
