During the chaos that unfolded at US airports over the weekend, at least 109 people were detained, according to Donald Trump, following his executive order banning refugees and travelers of certain nationalities from the US. Advocates project the total number could be much higher. Several legal actions representing the types of incidents that were common were filed over the weekend. Here are the personal stories of some of the faces of that legal action, while lawyers warn that dozens of others faced the same ordeals, but are too frightened to reveal their identities.
Hameed Darweesh – granted a visa for his work on behalf of the US government
Hameed Darweesh had a special immigrant visa allowing him into the US, granted specifically because of his work on behalf of the US government in Iraq, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.Darweesh, a husband and father of three, risked his life to work on behalf of the US military in Iraq and had twice been directly targeted and had to move his family from city to city in Iraq to try to keep him and them out of danger, according to the ACLU’s legal petition filed on his behalf.
The family of five had all been awarded visas and arrived together in New York on Saturday. After some delay, Darweesh’s family were allowed through but he was detained.
Darweesh had worked for a 10-year period as an interpreter, an electrical engineer and a contractor for the US in Iraq.
“He was contracted by the US government to work in a variety of positions that placed him in substantial risk of being targeted, attacked and killed by anti-American militias and insurgents,” according to the petition. Two of his Iraqi colleagues were murdered after being targeted.
Congress created the special visa program in 2007 and 2008 to provide safe refuge in the US for Iraqis and Afghans “who face of have faced serious threats on account of their faithful and valuable service to the US”.
Darweesh was finally released from the airport on Saturday afternoon and emerged to talk to reporters and to be cheered by the growing crowds of demonstrators at JFK airport.
On emerging, beaming, from the terminal at JFK, he told the crowds of demonstrators and reporters pressing around him: “This is the humanity. This is the soul of America. This is what pushed me to move, leave my country and come here. The land of freedom.”
Darweesh was one of the plaintiffs in the class action that was heard in a Brooklyn court on Saturday night, after immigration rights lawyers from a host of organizations sprang into action. Late on Saturday night, a federal judge ordered a temporary stay on deportations that took effect across the US.
The family plans to settle in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi – a visa to join his wife and son in Texas
Haider Alshawi was another Iraqi national detained at JFK airport in New York on Saturday.
Alshawi, an accountant, was coming to the US to join his wife, Duniyya, and seven-year-old son, who had settled in Houston in 2014 as permanent US residents after they were given refugee status in the US.
Duniyya was in danger as a result of her work for a US military contractor in Iraq. According to a legal petition from the ACLU, other relatives had worked for the same contractor and the family was under threat from insurgents who deemed them collaborators with US forces. In 2010, Duniyya’s brother was almost kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents and Alshawi’s sister-in-law was severely injured in a car bomb that killed her husband. Before the presidential executive order last Friday, Alshawi had been vetted and granted a visa to join his wife. Upon his arrival in New York on Friday evening, he was held by border agents on the plane, then in the airport.
Lawyers were not able to talk to him at the airport but they filed a lawsuit demanding his release and warning that he was at risk of being returned to Iraq against his will “despite the grave danger he faces there”.
Alshawi emerged from JFK airport at about 7.15pm on Saturday. He was put up in a hotel overnight by immigration rights groups and then flew from La Guardia airport to Houston on Sunday morning, where he joined his wife and son.
“They are incredibly happy to be reunited,” said Becca Heller of the International Refugee Assistance Project.
Mazdak Tootkaboni and Arghavan Louhghalam – permanent residents and professors, detained
Mazdak Tootkaboni and his wife, Arghavan Louhghalam, are associate professors of engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. They both received their PhDs from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
Louhghalam also has a master’s degree in earthquake engineering from the University of Tehran, while her husband has a master’s in civil engineering from the same institution, and the two are Iranian nationals, with permanent residency in the US.
The academic couple experienced a political earthquake on Saturday night when they were returning from a conference in France and were stopped from entering the United States after their flight arrived at Boston’s Logan airport.
As a result of Trump’s order, the couple ended up being held and questioned extensively at the airport for four hours. Immigration lawyers went to court on their behalf and finally got them released. The couple are now plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by immigration lawyers from a firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and from the ACLU.
Undeterred, both the engineers were back at work in Dartmouth on Monday. Reached in her office, Louhghalam told the Guardian she felt fine, though she said the experience at the airport had been stressful. Then she politely excused herself, saying she was already one minute late for an academic meeting.
Tareq and Ammar Aziz – held at an airport in Ethiopia
Tareq and Ammar Aziz are currently sleeping rough at the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, after they arrived in the Washington DC-area Dulles airport from east Africa, with valid immigration documents, ready to fly on to Flint, Michigan, to be reunited with their father, a US citizen.
Tareq, 21, and Ammar, 19, citizens of Yemen, were handcuffed at the US airport after their long flight and two hours later were put on another plane heading back the way they had come.
The brothers had had to go to the tiny east African country of Djibouti to be issued their US residency papers and had boarded an Ethiopian Airlines flight to the US on Friday, taking off shortly before Trump signed his executive order banning Yemenis from entering the US. One of their US lawyers, Paul Hughes, said that when they landed at Dulles on Saturday, they were put back on an Ethiopian Airlines flight, which happened to be heading to Addis Ababa.
On Monday, the two young men were still at the airport in Ethiopia with patchy cell phone service, trying to communicate with lawyers in the US to see if they could reach America.
“They are sleeping on chairs at the airport, with their backpacks, utterly bewildered,” said Hughes.
Hughes said the men spoke English but were not given access to legal advice in Dulles and were “coerced into signing a form” that relinquished their immigration status.
Hughes and other lawyers have filed a class action on behalf of the Aziz brothers and more than 60 other Jane or John Does that they believe were turned around and put on flights out of the US at the weekend.
Ali Vayeghan – held without a lawyer and sent back to Tehran
Ali Vayeghan was also dispatched on a flight just after he arrived. Vayeghan, an Iranian, had waited 12 years to be reunited with his son in Indiana.
Vayeghan was due to arrive in Los Angeles to meet his brother and niece just after 7pm on Friday, less than three hours after Trump signed his executive order suspending immigration from Iran, according to one of his lawyers, Peter Bibring of the ACLU. By 3am on Saturday, Vayeghan had not emerged into the arrivals hall at Los Angeles international airport (LAX). In fact, he was being held behind the scenes and immigration lawyers were not allowed to talk to him.
However, the ACLU filed a court petition arguing that blocking Vayeghan from entry to the US was unconstitutional. “He was held at LAX without being given food or a place to sleep from Friday evening until Saturday afternoon,” Bibring said.
But just as the legal team secured the paperwork for his release from detention at the airport, it turned out that Vayeghan, less than an hour before, had been put on a flight on Saturday late afternoon back to Tehran, via Dubai.
A judge has since ordered that he be returned to the US and the ACLU is toiling to get him back.
“It’s been an ordeal for the family,” Bibring said.
Khanon Mahindokht Azad – a grandmother who fell sick at the airport and was under pressure to sign away her immigration rights
Khanon Mahindokht Azad is a 78-year-old grandmother from Iran who travels to the US every few years to visit her 10 children, nine of whom are US citizens and one a permanent resident. On Saturday, she arrived at Los Angeles with a tourist visa, ready to visit her children, but she was detained at the airport by border agents.
Officials tried to pressure her to sign a document agreeing to withdraw her application for admission to the US with her valid visa, according to a legal filing. She told her son what was happening when officials allowed her to call him. Azad has diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney problems. At one point, agents called her son to tell him that she had fallen ill at the airport and they had called an ambulance, but that she later recovered.
Azad refused to sign the document agents were pressuring her to sign, but she was not given access to any legal counsel, despite multiple attempts by lawyers to reach her. At one point, her personal cellphone was confiscated. Azad was allowed into the US on Sunday after 27 hours of detention at LAX.