Several would-be passengers have been barred from boarding flights to the United States. A new US immigration ban will even apply to green card holders from seven Muslim-majority nations.
Five Iraqis and a Yemeni national were kept from boarding a flight from Cairo to New York on Saturday, despite all seven people having already obtained the necessary migration visas to enter the United States.
A source at Cairo airport said: "When an official at the JF Kennedy Airport was notified of their status, he issued an order barring them from entering the US."
The passengers were then escorted by a representative of the United Nations Refugee Agency, who reportedly informed them to check with the US embassies that had issued their visas. One of the Iraqis was later released and allowed into the United States, US media reported.
Later on Saturday, Dutch airline KLM said it had kept seven passengers from boarding a US-bound flight. Manel Vrijenhoek, a KLM spokesperson, said: "We would love to bring them there. That's not the problem. It's just that this is what the US sprang on the rest of the world - that these people are no longer welcome." The airline refused to specify which country the passengers were from or where they were flying from.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday temporarily suspending refugee arrivals and imposing tough new controls on travelers from seven Muslim countries.
The countries affected are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. A study from the US Cato Institute found that foreigners from those seven nations have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks on US soil between 1975 and the end of 2015.
The order suspends admissions to the US from the selected countries for four months and also indefinitely bans arrivals of citizens from war-torn Syria.
The American Civil Liberties Union said on Saturday that it will sue the Trump administration over Friday's order
m.dw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment