San Franscisco: A Yemeni mother who fought for the right to see her dying son arrived Wednesday night in California after the Trump administration gave her a long-sought waiver to its travel ban.
Shaima Swileh held her son, Abdullah, who was hooked up to life support, before her and her husband are to take him off.
Swileh was mobbed by well-wishers at San Francisco International Airport.
“This is a difficult time for our family but we are blessed to be together,” the boy’s father, Ali Hassan, said at the airport. “I ask you to respect our privacy as we go to be with our son again.”
Hassan and Swileh, wearing dark glasses and a white headscarf, were then driven away to see their 2-year-old son, Abdullah, at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland.
Citizens from Yemen and four other mostly Muslim countries, along with North Korea and Venezuela, are restricted from coming to the United States under the travel ban enacted under President Donald Trump.
The State Department granted Swileh a waiver Tuesday after lawyers with the Council on American-Islamic Relations sued this week, ending her family’s yearlong battle.
“This will allow us to mourn with dignity,” the boy’s father had said in an earlier statement.
Hassan, who is a US citizen and lives in Stockton, brought Abdullah to California in the fall to get treatment for a genetic brain disorder.
“My wife is calling me every day wanting to kiss and hold her son for the one last time,” Hassan said, choking up as he made a public plea at a news conference Monday, a day before the government granted the visa.
The couple moved to Egypt after marrying in war-torn Yemen in 2016 and had been trying to get a visa for Swileh since 2017 so the family could move to California.
When the boy’s health worsened, Hassan went ahead to California in October to get their son help. As the couple fought for a waiver, doctors put Abdullah on life support.
“I am emailing them, crying, and telling them that my son is dying,” Hassan said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee newspaper.
He started losing hope and was considering pulling his son off life support to end his suffering.
But then a hospital social worker reached out to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which sued Monday, said Basim Elkarra, executive director of the group in Sacramento.
Swileh lost months with her child over what amounted to unnecessary delays and red tape, Elkarra said.
