‘They have killed my dream’: Immigration ban sows panic and confusion at airports around the globe

ISTANBUL – After working as an interpreter for an American security company in Iraq, and enduring years of background checks after he applied for a U.S. visa, Labeeb Ali’s plans to move to the United States ended abruptly Saturday in an airport in Qatar, where officials prevented Ali, an Iraqi citizen, from boarding a flight to Texas.

“I have the visa in my passport,” he said, hours later, after he had stopped yelling at the airport staff and his rage had given way to despair. He had already sold his car and electronics shop in Iraq, in preparation for the move, and done “everything they told me to do,” he said, referring to U.S. officials, who he said had granted him a special immigrant visa on Jan. 24.

“They have killed my dream,” he said. “They took it away from me, in the last minutes.”

President Donald Trump’s order Friday to temporarily ban citizens from several Muslim-majority countries spread anguish, panic and confusion in airports around the globe Saturday, as nationals of the countries affected by the order were barred by airlines from traveling, abruptly changed their plans or were detained upon arrival in the United States.

Airlines rushed to disseminate guidelines on how Trump’s order would affect travel, even as officials in the United States were still puzzling over how exactly to interpret the order’s language.

Lufthansa, the German carrier, released a statement saying it was “obliged by law to strictly adhere to US immigration requirements.” But, reflecting the confusion over the U.S. directive, the airline said only that citizens of the affected countries “might not be accepted onboard US flights.”

The executive order, titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” bars citizens from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Libya, all predominantly Muslim nations, from entering the United States for the next 90 days. The order also indefinitely bars Syrian refugees from resettlement in the United States and suspends entry of all refugees from any country for 120 days.

Ali, the Iraqi citizen, said that two Syrians were also stopped from boarding the same flight to Texas. In Egypt, security officials stopped five Iraqi citizens and a Yemeni national from boarding a flight from Cairo to the United States, because their visas “had a problem,” an Egyptian security official said. The Iraqis were waiting to be sent back to Irbil, in northern Iraq, the official said.

There were unconfirmed reports that Iranian visitors as well as permanent green-card holders were restricted from traveling to the United States by officials at airports in Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi as well as Qatar, according to Hazhir Rahmandad, an Iranian American professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who created a crowdsourced database to track Iranian travelers affected by the ban.

While the details in the database could not be independently verified, the reports also suggested scores of Iranian visitors and green-card holders were also being turned away at several airports upon arrival in the United States.

The data and reports so far “suggest there is confusion among border agents about how to treat” the various categories of visa holders, Rahmandad said, adding that his parents are green-card holders, but are currently in Iran.

Erin Cunningham in Istanbul and Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.