POSTED BY MARTIN KICH
Here is the opening of an article written by Jack Torry for the Columbus Dispatch:
Sens. Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown objected to the government’s decision to prevent a Cleveland Clinic physician on a Sudanese passport from returning to the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on people from seven countries from entering America.
In an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Portman, R-Ohio, said Suha Abushamma, a physician at the Cleveland Clinic since July and who has a work visa, should have been allowed into the country “because she’s been properly vetted” in the past by U.S. officials.
Employing even sharper language, Brown, D-Ohio, said called the decision to block her entry “cruel, foolish and out of step with American values,” adding “turning away doctors here to lean and help people does not make America safer.”
Brown spoke personally with senior officials at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the nation’s most prestigious medical institutions.
Abushamma, 26, who lives in the Cleveland suburb of Cleveland Heights, is Muslim and a citizen of Sudan. She had been in the Middle East for the past three weeks before flying Saturday from Saudi Arabia to John F. Kennedy International in New York City.
In a telephone interview with Cleveland.com, she said she was detained for 10 hours at the airport and then forced to board a jet to return to Saudi Arabia.
And here is an excerpt from another, uncredited article published by the Columbus Dispatch:
Parisa Fasihianifard, 24, arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport after a long trip from Tehran, Iran, to visit her husband, only to be detained and told she had to go home.
“She was crying and she told me she was banned to come inside and go through the gates,” said her husband Mohamad Zandian, 26, an Iranian doctoral student at Ohio State University. Zandian, who is studying chemistry according to the university’s online directory, said Saturday night that he was hoping to get his wife out of the country on a late night flight to avoid her being jailed until Monday.
“I don’t feel safe anymore to stay here in the U.S.,” Zandian told CNN. “I don’t think that I will stay in the U.S. anymore because of this kind of treatment.”
On Sunday morning, Ohio State University President Michael V. Drake tweeted, “We are actively working w/ our elected representatives to achieve a speedy & just resolution to the situation in NY.”
Others travelers caught in limbo include Iraqis who had been promised a life in America because of their service to the U.S. military, frail and elderly travelers from Iran and Yemen, and longtime U.S. residents traveling abroad who don’t know if they will be allowed to return home.
“What’s next? What’s going to happen next?” asked Mohammed al Rawi, an Iraqi-born American citizen in the Los Angeles area, after his 69-year-old father, coming to visit his grandchildren in California, was abruptly detained and sent back to Iraq after 12 hours in custody. “Are they going to create camps for Muslims and put us in it?”
Torry’s complete article is available at: http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170129/brown-portman-unhappy-cleveland-clinic-doctor-turned-away-in-trump-ban.
The complete second article is available at: http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170128/wife-of-ohio-state-student-detained-in-trumps-travel-ban.
