Taking on the travel ban
Syrian family’s story illustrates the obstacles
The process for obtaining travel ban waivers for entry into the United States is still shrouded in uncertainty, which causes delays for thousands of American citizens waiting for loved ones.
NEW YORK – Mohammed Hafar paced around the airport terminal – first to the monitor to check flight arrivals, then to the gift shop and lastly to the doors where international passengers were exiting.
At last, out came Jana Hafar, his tall, slender, dark-haired teen daughter who had been forced by President Donald Trump’s travel ban to stay behind in Syria for months while her father, mother and 10-year-old brother started rebuilding their lives in Bloomfield, New Jersey, with no clear idea of when the family would be together again.
“Every time I speak to her, she ask, ‘When are they going to give me the visa?’ ” the elder Hafar said, recalling the days of uncertainty that took up the better part of this year. There was “nothing I could tell her, because nobody knows when.”
That she landed at Kennedy Airport on a day in early December was testament to her father’s determination to keep his promise that they would be reunited and his willingness to go as far as suing the government in federal court. Advocates say the process for obtaining a travel ban waiver is still shrouded in unpredictability, which causes delays for thousands of American citizens waiting for loved ones.
The “system is messed up,” said Curtis Morrison, the Los Angeles-based attorney who has filed several federal law2012, suits, including Hafar’s, against the administration on behalf of dozens of plaintiffs from countries affected by the travel ban.
Many of those he has represented have received visas. But he said those cases represent only a fraction of the people in need and that the decision to grant those visas is unfair to thousands of other immigrants who cannot sue or do not know how to take their frustrations to court.
“The government should not be able to do this,” Morrison said. “It should not be able to cherry-pick the visas that it wants to issue so that it can evade review.”
Hafar, a Syria native and naturalized American citizen since 1996, had been living in Syria with his family when civil war started. He came back to the U.S. in assuming he could transfer citizenship to his children and apply separately for his wife to receive a green card making her a permanent legal resident.
His wife got the card in early 2017, but paperwork problems got in the way of the children’s transfers, requiring him to submit immigrant petitions for them. He was told in 2018 that his son would get his visa, but there was no word on when Jana would.
“When I heard that, it was very, very painful for me,” Jana said last week in the family’s New Jersey apartment. “Because I understand that I’m going to be left alone.”
Her brother, Karim, came to the U.S. in May, leaving Jana behind in Damascus with her cancer-stricken grandfather and her grandmother.