Joel Was Right
Member
President Trumps executive order closing the nations borders to refugees was put into immediate effect Friday night. Refugees who were in the air on the way to the United States when the order was signed were stopped and detained at airports.
The detentions prompted legal challenges as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy Airport filed a writ of habeas corpus early Saturday in the Eastern District of New York seeking to have their clients released. At the same time, they filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.
It was unclear how many refugees and immigrants were being held nationwide in the aftermath of the executive order. The complaints were filed by a prominent group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center, the National Immigration Law Center, Yale Law Schools Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization and the firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.
The lawyers said that one of the Iraqis detained at Kennedy Airport, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had worked on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq for 10 years. The other, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the United States to join his wife, who had worked for a U.S. contractor, and young son, the lawyers said. They said both men were detained at the airport Friday night after arriving on separate flights.
The attorneys said they were not allowed to meet with their clients, and there were tense moments as they tried to reach them.
Who is the person we need to talk to? asked one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project. Mr. President, said a Customs and Border Protection agent, who declined to identify himself. Call Mr. Trump.
In the arrivals hall at Terminal 4 of Kennedy Airport, Mr. Doss and two other lawyers fought fatigue as they tried to learn the status of their clients on the other side of the security perimeter.
Weve never had an issue once one of our clients was at a port of entry in the United States, Mr. Doss said. To see people being detained indefinitely in the country thats supposed to welcome them is a total shock.
These are people with valid visas and legitimate refugee claims who have already been determined by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to be admissible and to be allowed to enter the U.S. and now are being unlawfully detained, Mr. Doss said.
Relatives crowded the living room in their pajamas and slippers, making and receiving phone calls to and from other relatives and the refugees lawyers. At times, D. was so emotional she had trouble speaking about her husbands predicament.
She pulled out her cellphone and flipped through her pictures while seated on the couch. She wanted to show a reporter a picture she took of her sons letter to Santa Claus. In November, at a Macys Santa-letter display at a nearby mall, the boy wrote out his wish: Dear Santa: Can you bring my Dad from Sweden pls. He has not seen his father in three years. Im really breaking down, because I dont know what to do, she said. Its not fair.
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/u...prod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share