A travel ban was put in place today by the Trump administration that targets 12 countries, including Yemen. This has made many people in Detroit’s Yemeni community worry about their ability to visit family abroad.
Trump made it illegal for people from 12 countries to come to the US. What you need to know
The United States no longer lets people from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen enter.
There are also some travel limits in place for Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
Abdo Al Wajeeh works as a kitchen helper at Haus of Brunch in Downtown Detroit. The ban makes him unsure of when he can see his family again.
“I miss them,” Al Wajeeh said.
As a way to help his wife and three kids in Yemen, Al Wajeeh came to Michigan in 2000. He sends his family $1,000 every month to help them out. He sees them about every two years.
Al Wajeeh is afraid to go back to Yemen because he thinks he won’t be able to get back into the US now that the travel ban is in place.
“It’s sad,” Al Wajeeh said.
Businesses in the area are also being hurt by the ban. Maher Obeid, who owns the new restaurant Haus of Brunch, says that many of his workers are Yemeni citizens who have family living outside of Yemen.
“Most of our employees are from Yemen,” Obeid said. “Being from Yemen, I feel like we have a close connection, which makes it easy to talk to each other. But a lot of them have come here on visas to stay and find a second home or a place to live.” That means it has an effect on our business.”
Obeid said that most of his workers only get to see their families in Yemen every two years, if they’re lucky.
“Someone is stuck there.” They were not willing to risk not being able to see their families or their way of life by traveling, so making sure they can’t come back is the same thing, Obeid said.
Rocky Raczkowski helped defend the strategy. He has been a member of the Michigan GOP for 38 years.
“These countries have deficient screening and vetting services, which historically refused to take back their own citizens when they overstayed their visas or they created a crime here in the United States,” said Raczkowski.
Nabih Ayad of the Arab American Civil Rights League, who had already sued the government in federal court over the 2018 travel ban, questioned how the countries that were banned were chosen.
“If you look at possibly other nations that have worse vetting process, they’re not on their list, possibly,” he said.
Ayad said that the present ban seems to be more specific than older ones.
“This one is more clarified and more centered, meaning that they had to basically identify why each nation was on that ban to justify their actions so it could possibly pass muster on the judiciary challenges that may face down the road here,” said Ayad.
Ayad is looking into possible court challenges to the ban because he thinks the White House used biased information.
“That’s kind of what we’re looking into, all the other numbers of other nations that were not put on that list that could possibly show that this is just intended to really discriminate against certain black and brown Middle Eastern individuals from those nations and predominantly Muslim nations,” he said.
Al Wajeeh, meanwhile, wants to bring his family to the United States one day.
“I want to bring them,” Al Wajeeh said. “Because it’s very hard to stay there.”
