Two Brooklynites who had been stranded abroad by President Trump’s travel ban are now back safe and sound in Kings County.
Iranian Prospect-Lefferts Gardens student Saira Rafiee and Sudanese Crown Heights doctor Dr. Kamal Fadlalla were able to board flights back to the U.S. this week, where they were greeted at the airport by delighted friends and co-workers who had been rallying for their return.
“We fought for her,” said Barbara Bowen a faculty union leader at the City University of New York, where Rafiee is a student. “We are thrilled to have her back.”
Both Rafiee and Fadlalla were forbidden from boarding planes back to the U.S. a week ago while visiting their families in their homelands, after Trump signed an executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days.
But a federal judge in Washington state temporarily blocked the ban on Friday, allowing them and others marooned around the world to return.
Fadlalla is a second-year resident in internal medicine at Interfaith Medical Center in Crown Heights here on a work visa, while Rafiee is on a student visa while she works towards her PhD in political science at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.
Dozens of students and faculty members from the college rallied outside a Brooklyn’s federal courthouse last week demanding her return.
Even before Trump signed his ban, Rafiee said she feared she might not be able to stay in the country to complete her studies under his presidency, and joined her other students marching to Trump Tower to protest his immigration policies.
“There is a possibility I might not be able to finish the program,” she said at the time, just days after the election. “I have no idea what will happen.”
