As Trump’s Muslim ban executive order continues its way through the courts, thousands of lives are held in an anxious abeyance. The Intercept has gotten its hands on “internal memos” from diplomats around the world, detailing the destruction of Trump and his crew of racist-xenphobes, to their higher-ups in Washington. While Trump and his supporters pretend that the world is not on fire, these memos tell a very brutal and tragic set of stories.
But a memo from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, dated February 6, 2017, a little over a week after the order was signed, told the stories of refugees for whom the travel ban was “undoubtedly devastating.” The memo noted that despite a court stay halting its implementation, the order had already had “severely impacted” U.S. refugee programs, and had “delayed thousands of in-process legitimate travelers.”
More than 150 refugees from Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan, who had been poised to travel to the United States, were left stranded in a transit camp in Addis Ababa by the order. When State Department officials visited the camp on January 30, the refugees asked them to intercede and “to prioritize those who are more in need,” including a Somali “with a heart condition whose family departed the day before the EO was announced,” and an “8 year-old boy who has lost 90 percent of his vision to glaucoma,” according to the February 6 memo. Among the Somalis who had to be informed that their “already-printed visas would not allow them entry into the United States” were people who had been “waiting more than a year to join their family members already settled in the U.S.” Those cases included a 2-year-old and “a 4-year-old who had never met his father.”
There are stories of young people attempting suicide upon hearing that they were indefinitely marooned, with their options of “hope” being squashed out by the tiny fingers of a hateful and scared man. The catalogue of stories in the memos are heart-wrenching. This has all happened before; and we are failing millions of children the world over once again.
The Supreme Court is set to hear the Muslim ban case on October 10. With a stolen seat, it is hard to feel secure that justice and morality will prevail.