TRUMP BAN WORRIES REFUGEES IN SOMALIA
Many who have prepared to come to the USA are in limbo
NAIROBI, KENYA Nearly 15,000 Somalis who fled their war- torn country to Kenya and planned to resettle in the United States are stuck in the world’s largest refugee camp because President Trump suspended the U. S. asylum program.
They include 137 refugees who just days ago thought they would be boarding flights to the U. S. Now they are gripped with “fear, devastation, worry, panic and heartbrokenness,” said Yvonne Ndege, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency.
Desperate Somalis had hoped to escape warfare and poverty in their nation. Now those hopes are on hold after Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspended entry of refugees into the U. S. for 120 days.
Ahmed Ismail Shafat, 25, who was born and raised in the Dadaab refugee camp on the Kenya- Somalia border, was supposed to leave Monday for London, then on to Chicago and finally Kansas City, Mo., to be resettled.
Instead, he was part of the group attending a town hall meeting Tuesday with U. N. and U. S. officials at a transit center.
“The refugees who were to be resettled in the U. S. have undergone a very, very rigorous process before being identified for resettlement in the U. S.,” Ndege said. “They undergo numerous security checks involving several U. S. agencies and are subject to the highest category security checks of any traveler to the U. S.”
Shafat, who also was interviewed by officials from the Department of Homeland Security, has gone through a vetting process that took 10 years to complete. “I just got American clothing because I heard the country is very cold,” he said.
“I got a big jacket in the market and told the vendor I would send money for it when I got a job in America.”
He had hoped to begin work on a college degree in math and get a job on the side to send money back to his mother in the camp.
Many at the transit center had spent the previous week preparing to leave for America, completing medical checkups and getting a cultural orientation of the United States. Suleimn Yussuf Muhumed, 24, was supposed to begin cultural orientation on Friday — the day Trump signed the order.
Muhumed said he heard Ohio “is a very cool place, a very nice place for life, and the people are very welcoming.”
According to the U. N., at least 26,000 refugees in Kenya were in the process of resettlement to the U. S. and are affected by the executive order — 14,500 of them from Dadaab.
Farhiyo Hassan was supposed to fly Tuesday. “My husband is there already,” Farhiyo said.
“I was feeling so happy, so good that I could go, but now I don’t know what is happening.”