Westneat: Recall travel ban? It’s still ripping families apart

Remember the travel ban? The airport protests long ago died away, the news crowded out by fresh outrages. But it’s still very much in effect. And it’s still pointlessly splitting families, even those containing our own citizens.

Take Ahmed, who came here as a political refugee from Somalia in the 1980s. He earned his U.S. citizenship in a ceremony at the immigration office in Tukwila in 2008, and now drives a truck delivering medical supplies to area hospitals.

So when he married Hana Mohamed, a Somali citizen, in 2015, he immediately applied to bring her here. The petition was approved in 2016, but the visa hadn’t yet been processed through the embassy in Djibouti when Donald Trump got elected.

Within his first week of taking office, Trump issued the first of his travel bans, following on his campaign pledge for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Presidential Proclamation

The final version effectively barred all travel to the U.S. from five majority-Muslim countries, one of which is Somalia, along with North Korea. It was upheld in a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court last year. Key to that decision was that the president had broad powers to restrict immigration, but also that there would be a way to apply for exceptions.

But being related to a U.S. citizen doesn’t cut it anymore, at least not if you’re Somali. The harsh bottom line came for Ahmed in a breezy email from the U.S. embassy’s consular section in August 2018 — the same month Melania Trump’s parents were granted U.S. citizenship.

“Greetings from the US Embassy in Djibouti, and thank you kindly for your message. Per our records, your visa was refused appropriately pursuant to Presidential Proclamation 9645” — the third and final version of the travel ban.

“People have completely forgotten about the travel ban, but Trump won on it,” said Vicky Dobrin, a Seattle immigration attorney. “He succeeded in banning Muslims, at least from these countries. It’s blanket enough that it doesn’t matter if the reason you’re coming here is to be with your U.S. citizen husband.”

In April 2019, the most recent month that figures are available from the State Department, 15 Somalis were granted immigration visas to the entire United States. The average was 10 times that in 2016.

When the Supreme Court upheld the ban, one of the dissenting judges, Sonia Sotomayor, argued that the policy was as poorly designed as it was malevolent. This would become apparent in the months and years ahead, she predicted, not in legal briefs or political debates, but through “the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.”

Hassan Ahmed is one U.S. citizen who can attest: She called that one right.