Action Network EmailA New York judge put a "stay" on this last night at about 9
pm.
----- Original Message -----
From: Miriam Vieni
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2017 9:28 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] FW: Massive crowd forming at JFK to protest Muslim
ban, airport protests around the country
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ryan Grim [mailto:ryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2017 8:28 PM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Massive crowd forming at JFK to protest Muslim ban, airport protests
around the country
There are times when it's not exactly clear which
side of history one is on. This is not one of those times. Providing refuge to
victims of violence and persecution is a human value as old as violence itself.
It's clear that a majority of the country understands
that, and protests are breaking out at airports around the country, with a very
large one right now at JFK and protests planned or in process at international
airports in Los Angeles (LAX), Chicago (O'Hare), SFO, PHL, SEA, BOS, DEN, ATL
and Dulles. The full list, which is being updated regularly, is here:
http://getgroundgame.com/airportprotests.html ;
If you go, send me video or a photo and let me know
how it's going. And be safe.
I'm no lawyer, by the way, but this executive order
is clearly, absolutely unconstitutional. It is forbidden to single out a
religion for negative treatment, and Trump's intent is 100% clear whether the
word "Muslim" appears in the text or not.
Our editor in chief, Lydia Polgreen, is
coincidentally about to land at JFK, and she'll likely be live streaming from
there with our producer Omar Kasrawi. You can follow her here:
https://twitter.com/lpolgreen
And Omar is here: https://twitter.com/kasrawinyc
After he absurdly accused Obama of founding ISIS,
Trump has now become their number one recruiting tool. Here's who he's hurting:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/refugees-immigrants-affected-by-trump-order_us_588d2155e4b08a14f7e658c9?eqx2lh0ukhs81fko6r
These Are The Refugees And Immigrants Already
Affected By Trump's Executive Order
By Daniel Marans, Chris Mathias and Jesselyn Cook
The real-life consequences of President Donald
Trump's executive order on Friday banning Syrian refugees and immigrants from
seven majority-Muslim nations became apparent within hours of his signing it.
A wide range of mainly Muslim immigrants learned that
their hopes of finding safety in the United States or reuniting with family
here were suddenly in serious jeopardy ― if not dashed entirely. Syrian
families approved for resettlement in the U.S. were stuck in limbo at the last
minute. Iraqis who risked their lives interpreting for the U.S. military during
the war were detained upon their arrival in American airports. And longtime
American residents were faced with indefinite separation from family members.
The Trump administration also made clear that the
500,000 American green card holders from these countries ― Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen ― would be approved for re-entry only on a
case-by-case basis. If they are currently in the U.S., those green card holders
will be required to consult with the government before traveling outside the
country.
Here are just a few of these people's stories.
Hamid Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi
Hamid Khalid Darweesh, a former Iraqi interpreter for
the U.S. Army, and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, an Iraqi refugee, were detained
upon arrival at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Friday
night.
Darweesh, who was released Saturday afternoon, said
at a press conference that he had endured hours of questioning during his
overnight detention.
But he nonetheless emphasized his excitement at
arriving in the U.S., which he called the "greatest country in the world."
Earlier on Saturday, Mark Doss, an attorney with the
International Refugee Assistance Project who is representing Darweesh and
Alshawi, told CNN that he had been unable to communicate with his clients
during their detention.
Alshawi was coming to reunite with his wife, a former
U.S. government contractor, and his children, who already live in the United
States. He remains in detention along with 10 other immigrants being held at
the airport, according to Murad Adawdeh of the New York City Immigration
Coalition.
"They're treating them like they have no rights,"
Adawdeh said.
While Afghanistan is not on the list of proscribed
countries, an Afghan interpreter was detained at San Francisco International
Airport on Friday while his wife and children were allowed through, according
to Matt Zeller, founder of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit that helps Afghan
and Iraqi combat interpreters resettle safely in the United States.
Azaz Elshami
Azaz Elshami, a Sudanese citizen in her mid-30s, has
been a permanent U.S. resident since 2012, when she was picked in a State
Department lottery. Prior to that, she worked at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi
Arabia, where she had an American security clearance.
Elshami, who now earns a living as a
nonviolent-communication consultant, was on vacation visiting friends in
Ethiopia when Trump issued his executive order barring immigration from Sudan.
Although she is a green card holder, Elshami is not
willing to take her chances at an American airport without a lawyer's help. She
worries that if the United States turns her away, she will ultimately be sent
back to Sudan, where her work advocating for human rights would put her life in
danger.
"This is the irony: I don't approve of my country's
government. I have not visited Sudan since 1997. And yet I am living with the
consequences of this government," she told The Huffington Post.
Elshami's Ethiopian tourist visa will soon run out,
at which point her options will dwindle. She plans to go to a country that
accepts Sudanese citizens without a visa and begin the process there of
securing U.S. approval for her re-entry. Meanwhile, her aging mother, who
recently survived a heart attack and relies on Elshami's assistance, is living
in the United States.
"This is not the America that I know. I will refuse
to hold this as the image of the America that I know," she said.
Meathaq and Mahmoud
Meathaq, 45, and Mahmoud, 49, of Baghdad just arrived
in Knoxville, Tennessee, in August with their 5-year-old son and 15-year-old
daughter. But they have twin 18-year-old daughters still living in Iraq.
Thanks to Mahmoud's work as a translator for the U.S.
Army, they were able to get special immigrant visas. The process for approving
those visas took four years, beginning when they first applied in 2012. In the
interim period, Iraq's deteriorating security situation began to endanger them.
Mahmoud was seriously wounded by a car bombing in 2014.
By the time their visas were approved, their
daughters were over 18, which meant the U.S. government required additional
processing before it would green-light their admission. Now the twins are stuck
in Baghdad, and their parents fear the family will not be able to reunite.
(Meathaq and Mahmoud withheld their last names out of concern for their older
daughters' safety.)
"I am crying all the time, especially after the new
law from President Trump," Meathaq told HuffPost. "I miss them and the
situation in Iraq is so bad and I don't know what to do to help."
MEATHAQ
Meathaq attends the Women's March on Washington on
Jan. 21, 2017. She is desperate to bring her twin daughters, who are still in
Iraq, to the United States.
Mohammed Al Rawi
Mohammed Al Rawi, who risked his life working for the
Los Angeles Times bureau in Baghdad, moved to Long Beach, California, in 2010.
His father was leaving Qatar to fly to Los Angeles to visit him Friday night
when a U.S. official stopped the 69-year-old man and informed him that Trump
had "canceled all visas," Al Rawi wrote on Facebook.
U.S. officials then detained Al Rawi's father in an
unknown location and confiscated his passport, making it impossible for Al Rawi
to book him a hotel in Qatar to sleep for the night, he wrote. His father's
phone died, so he has not been able to get in touch.
Um Mohammed
Um Mohammed, a 30-year-old Syrian mother of two, has
lived in New Jersey with her husband and children since the summer of 2015.
The family of refugees spent months working to get
Mohammed's parents and two siblings cleared for entry into the U.S. from
Turkey. Their admission was finally approved and travel arrangements were
booked, but the news proved too good to be true.
On Saturday, four days before Mohammed's family
members were due to arrive for the long-awaited reunification, they had to
cancel their flights as a result of the Trump administration's refugee ban.
"It's over for all of us," Mohammed told HuffPost
later that day.
Follow
Daniel Marans @danielmarans
If you or someone you know has been affected by the
new refugee/immigration/travel ban, please message me. Email in bio
Nashwan Abdullah
Nashwan Abdullah, 25, of Damascus, Syria, is on track
to finish his master's degree in music performance at Indiana University of
Pennsylvania in May. Now that Trump has banned immigration from Syria, Abdullah
is not sure if he'll be able to stay. He had been hoping to apply for a
12-month work visa available to foreign students, but does not know whether
this is possible any longer.
Abdullah is sure, however, that he will not return to
Syria. He does not want to be drafted into the Syrian military or deal with the
danger and scarcity of basic necessities in the Syrian capital.
"Of course I am afraid to go back. It's a war zone.
It's an unsafe, bad situation," he told HuffPost.
There is one glimmer of hope for Abdullah: He is
Catholic, so he is not sure if the ban is "going to include me or not."
Sahar Algonaimi
Border officials at Chicago O'Hare International
Airport detained 60-year-old Syrian national Sahar Algonaimi for five hours on
Saturday. Algonaimi had traveled to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia to visit her
sick mother in the hospital. Instead, she was forced to board a flight to the
United Arab Emirates on her way back home.
Algonaimi holds a U.S. visa and had planned to stay
in the country for a week.
Her sister, Nour Ulayyet, a U.S. citizen who now
lives in India, pleaded with border officials to no avail to let Algonaimi see
her mother.
"I needed someone to be with me here," Ulayyet
tearfully told HuffPost from the hospital. "How am I going to teach my kids and
tell them that this is a free country? How can we tell my kids that we have to
take care of each other?"
Elise Foley and Sebastian Murdock contributed
reporting.
* * *
Have you or someone you know been affected by
President Trump's executive order banning refugees and immigrants from certain
countries? If so, please email one of the authors:
daniel.marans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, jesselyn.cook@huffingtonpost.comand
christopher.mathias@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
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