Yemeni mother gets visa to visit terminally ill son in US
The Yemeni mother of a terminally ill toddler has won her fight for a US travel ban waiver so she can visit her son in a California hospital, according to an activist group.
Abdullah Hassan, 2, was born in Yemen with a debilitating brain condition, which led his father to take him to the US for medical treatment a few months ago. Father and son have US citizenship but the mother is a Yemeni citizen living in Egypt.
Shaima Swileh will now get on the next available flight out of Egypt, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations – a journey that could take as long as 20 hours – after a waiver was issued by the State Department yesterday. A successful fundraising effort will pay for her flight and the boy’s funeral, the council said.
With Abdullah dependent on a ventilator to breathe at the University of California San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, his family is contemplating taking him off life support.
His mother Shaima Swileh wanted to see him one last time but had been unable to obtain a visa to visit her son because of the White House’s travel ban, according to the council’s Sacramento Valley chapter.
Abdullah’s father had filed “paperwork to get an expedited humanitarian visa” for his wife, Cair-Sacramento Valley Executive Director Basim Elkarra said. He also appeared on CNN and in the American print media to appeal to US officials to allow his wife into the country to see her son.
“All she wishes is to hold his hand for the last time,” Ali Hassan, 22, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday. He had said his son would die if taken to Egypt to see his mother.