JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, NY — Sahar, a recent Stony Brook University graduate whose Iranian parents flew into JFK to visit her this weekend, showed up to the airport Saturday morning with the hope of hugging and kissing her mom and dad after three years of separation.



Instead, 32-year-old Sahar was informed by federal agents that her parents had been taken into custody — and would be forced to return to Iran on the next available flight. "They won't allow me to see them," she said. "I haven't seen them in years. I just want to see them, just for one minute. Just behind a window — anything."

UPDATE, Sunday, 4 p.m.: Yesterday evening, a federal judge in Brooklyn temporarily halted Trump's Muslim immigration ban. And finally, nearly 20 hours after the ban was halted, Sahar's parents were freed from detention at JFK. The family hugged and cried in the Terminal 4 arrivals hall Sunday afternoon. "Thank you to all the lawyers," she said, waving to a group of volunteer attorneys as she walked her parents out of Terminal 4.



Trump signed an executive order Friday that bans people from certain countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days. The countries were not named in the order, but several news outlets reported them as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iran, Yemen and Sudan. The order also indefinitely suspends the entry of Syrian refugees and bans the resettlement of refugees from any country for four months.



Vahideh Rasekhi, another Stony Brook University student currently working toward her PhD in linguistics, was also detained Saturday at JFK on her way back from spending winter break in Iran, according to the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Rasekhi and Sahar's parents were among approximately 20 immigrants and refugees detained at JFK by 6 p.m. Saturday, attorneys with the organization said.

Sahar — who did not want to provide her full name or show her face in a photo, for fear she would likewise be targeted by the Trump administration — broke down in tears in the Terminal 1 arrivals hall Saturday evening. "If I'd known this would happen, I would have never come" to the U.S., she said. "I thought it was a democracy."