When the death threats grew specific, Mustafa Alsaadi decided he needed to get out of Iraq. For years, he had helped the American military as a translator. America helped him in return: Alsaadi was granted a visa, which became a green card, which turned into citizenship and a life he loves in Texas.



Family members, also in danger because of Alsaadi’s work in Baghdad, were granted the right to join him. The 32-year-old became a US citizen in October 2015. It was a proud moment, he said on Saturday: “I’m thankful that I have this opportunity to be here. They gave it to me and gave it to my family.”

But after all the giving, on Friday, America started to take. Alsaadi’s 65-year-old father needs to return to Iraq in February, to resolve a family issue. He is a lawful permanent resident of the US, yet Donald Trump’s executive order targeting seven Muslim-majority nations means that as an Iraqi citizen it is highly uncertain that he will be allowed back if he leaves.

“Now we have to cancel his trip,” Alsaadi said, sitting behind a desk at the cheerfully coloured community centre where he works in south-west Houston, serving people from 70 nationalities. “Obviously I’m not going to let him go.”

Alsaadi knows something about risky travel: his daily commute in Baghdad was perilous. On top of the everyday hazards of life in Iraq during the war and after, interpreters have often been viewed as traitors, targeted and killed.

“The most dangerous thing is that you have to leave the base every single day and come back to the base every single day. So let’s say someone is following you,” he said, matter-of-factly. “They’re going to know where you live, who’s your family, where your family’s working, and you’re going to be targeted and your entire family’s going to be targeted.”

In 2009, more than three years after he began working for the US army and, later, a private contractor, Alsaadi was warned that if he went to a particular part of Baghdad there was a strong chance he would be killed. He started the application process for a US visa.

The vetting process took about a year and required a stringent background check, two interviews at the US embassy, numerous forms and a letter of support from an army officer. Finally, Alsaadi was awarded a special immigrant visa: a rarity available to translators in Iraq or Afghanistan. Hameed Khalid Darweesh, an Iraqi refugee whose plight made headlines when he was detained for 18 hours by immigration officials on arrival at New York’s JFK airport on Friday, had the same visa.

Alsaadi works in a Houston neighbourhood bisected by snarling freeways, where beige strip malls have bland exteriors that belie the exotic possibilities within. Indian restaurants, Halal food stores and sari wholesalers stand across the street from burger joints and a storefront in a gas station that can sell you a bus ticket to just about any major city in Mexico.

In 2015, Texas received more refugees than any other US state, despite attempts by its Republican leaders to foment a hostile atmosphere. Last September, the governor, Greg Abbott, announced Texas would pull out of the federal refugee resettlement programme, citing safety concerns.

Yet Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the country – perhaps the most diverse.

“I never have been in a situation since I came to the United States that someone told me, ‘You’re not welcome here,’” Alsaadi said. The president’s ban, he thinks, “doesn’t make any sense” – least of all for immigrants who put their safety on the line in the service of American interests.

“Is that the favour that [Trump] can return to them?” Alsaadi said. “It’s kind of hard to believe where things are going right now.”

‘I’ve been given the same opportunity as any other person’

Three miles away, the Syrian American Club of Houston is housed in a discreet, elegant modern building on a quiet street, with columns, a fountain and a skylight in the entrance hall. On Saturday, young children arrived for Arabic lessons as Mohammad Suleiman sat at a table and typed on a laptop computer. He is a native Texan – his parents moved from Syria to Houston.

“America’s supposed to be where everybody’s accepted,” the 18-year-old student said. And that is his experience: being the son of Middle Eastern immigrants was not a barrier, or unusual, in a metropolitan area of more than 6.3 million people, nearly a quarter of them foreign-born.

“I feel like I’ve been given the same opportunity as any other person in the city – in America, really,” he said.

His father, Mad, immigrated to the US 35 years ago and works as a mechanic.

“With the loyalty and the patriotism that I have for this country it would be unfair to be treated as a second-class citizen,” he said by phone. “I feel like what Trump is doing is totally wrong.”

Mad became a US citizen in 1989. “I lived from ’77 to ’81 in Kuwait and I felt more of a foreigner in Kuwait than I’ve felt in all the life that I’ve spent here in America,” he said.

Amer Al-Nahhas, the soft-spoken president of the club, immigrated 30 years ago. “Syrians have in my opinion been victimised twice,” the 56-year-old said. “They have been victimised by the civil war and then victimised by in some places being viewed as terrorists.”

In Houston, Nahhas found a pragmatic and optimistic place where immigrants felt accepted and brought a creative energy that helped the city flourish. Now there is uncertainty and anxiety; worries about the future, informed by the past.

“There are people that are very fearful about what could be next,” he said. “I think the odds of it are very minimal but there’s real fear among the community that there’ll be roundups … similar to what happened to the Japanese during world war two.”