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SAN FRANCISCO — After spending four years 8,600 miles apart, 12-year-old Eman Ali from Yemen and her 14-year-old sister from Los Banos will finally share a bedroom again.

Stranded for a nerve-wracking week with her father in the African country of Djibouti when President Donald Trump’s travel ban on immigrants left them in limbo, Eman — who had been living with her grandparents in Yemen for nearly seven years while navigating the immigration process — quickly cleared customs Sunday afternoon at San Francisco International Airport. Then she flew into the arms of her sister, Salma, who was waiting outside baggage claim with her uncle and cousins.

With TV cameras and reporters surrounding them, the two shy girls sobbed in each other’s arms.

“We’ve been waiting a long time, and we’re finally home,” said their father, Ahmed Ali, who has been a U.S. citizen since 2010 and manages a strip mall in Los Banos.

By Sunday evening, the father and sisters — who moved apart in 2011 but had seen each other during a visit in Yemen four years ago — were headed back to Los Banos in the Central Valley to reunite with Eman’s mother and younger sister.

The reunion was a scene repeated at airports across the country over the weekend, as immigrants with valid visas frantically rebooked flights to get to the U.S. after a federal judge in Seattle temporarily revoked Trump’s ban Friday evening.

“I am overjoyed,” said 39-year-old Gumaa Idris Mohamed, of Sudan, who had a valid visa but was turned away at a Sudanese airport last Monday. After a week of complications and false starts — and a requirement to purchase a return ticket to Sudan — he reunited with his wife at SFO on Sunday.

“I cannot describe how happy I am to be here,” he said.

A plane carrying Eman Ali, 12, of Yemen, whose four-year attempt to join her family in Los Banos was thwarted last week by President Trump’s executive order, landed at San Francisco International Airport on Sunday afternoon. (Courtesy of Katherine Lewis)

Eman’s arrival Sunday ended her harrowing journey that started in mid-January and included a 16-hour bus ride through war-torn Yemen, rerouted flights and a nail-biting credit card fiasco that forced them to miss a flight out of Djibouti. Finally, on Saturday, she and her father began a three-leg, 30-hour journey home.

Trump’s executive order nine days ago was an attempt to make good on his campaign promise to keep terrorists out of the U.S. and keep Americans safe. As recently as Friday, Trump tweeted, “we must keep ‘evil’ out of our country.”

But the order, signed at the end of Trump’s first week in office, created chaos and protests around the globe. It also swept up those least likely to be a security threat, including the dimple-faced Eman. She had been living with her grandparents in Yemen since 2011, when her mother and sister joined her father in Los Banos, believing Eman would soon follow. The family had initially thought Eman was an American citizen because her mother was one. But a technicality in the law that requires the mother to have lived in the U.S. for a full five years before Eman’s birth in Yemen meant Eman needed an immigrant visa. With Yemen becoming more dangerous and the American embassy closed there, Eman’s attempt to join her family took nearly seven years.

Finally, with the help of San Francisco-based immigration lawyer Katherine Lewis, who arranged an interview with the embassy in Djibouti, Eman began the long bus ride with her uncle across Yemen to get to an airport there. “It was really scary and not safe at all,” Ahmed Ali told the Bay Area News Group in a phone call last week while he was holed up in Djibouti with his daughter. “Just driving on the road, you don’t know who’s shooting who.”

Ali had rendezvoused with his daughter in Jordan and they flew together to Djibouti. Eman was granted her visa on Jan. 26, the day before Trump signed his executive order. When father and daughter arrived at the Djibouti airport the next day — with Eman’s suitcase packed with dresses as gifts for her mother and sisters — they were turned away. That began a week of anxiety, which became more intense when a Navy SEAL was killed the same night during a secret raid on an Al Qaeda compound in Yemen.

“To me, it meant we can’t send her back to Yemen, so how are are we going to get her here?” Lewis said. Still, “I was dreading having that conversation with Ahmed if everything was a dead end.”

At the Djibouti hotel all week, Ahmed tried to keep the details from his daughter. But she was often crying, he said. “I can’t explain to her. I don’t want to put ideas in her mind.”

Back in San Francisco, Lewis was contacting California’s two U.S. senators and the Alis’ congressman, Fresno Democrat Jim Costa, for help. But nothing worked until U.S. District Judge James Robart’s order Friday temporarily stopped the ban and allowed those with valid visas to come to the U.S.

Lewis called Ali in the middle of the night to book the next flight out of Djibouti. “We knew the window could be short,” she said.

But more stress followed. When she booked a flight through Turkish Airlines on her company credit card, she found out the charge was declined, just as father and daughter arrived at the airport. The credit card company suspected that the charge — a flight from Djibouti — was fraudulent. “It was a nightmare,” she said. Until 2 a.m. Saturday, “I was on the line trying to get them my credit card. It was almost booked. Then they said we can’t do it. It was too late. It was very stressful.”

Finally, she booked a flight to Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines using her personal credit card, and father and daughter finally left Djibouti. “We still had two more legs of the flight with news changing every minute,” Lewis said. “There was still uncertainty.”

With the U.S. Department of Justice seeking an emergency stay to halt the Seattle judge’s ruling, Lewis feared the Alis could get stuck in Addis Ababa during the three-hour layover. They made it to Frankfurt, Germany, but a nerve-wracking seven-hour layover turned into a nine-hour layover. In the midst of it, news surfaced that the request for the emergency stay was denied, allowing the Alis to come home.

Lewis was still nervous, however, and tracked the flight status on her computer, watching the plane leave the gate and line up for takeoff. She was at SFO on Sunday to greet them and help them through customs. Because Eman is under 18 and the daughter of U.S. citizens, she automatically became a U.S. citizen when her passport was stamped.

“We are thrilled they are here,” Lewis said. “It’s been a long, long journey.”

Salma, Eman’s sister, said she and her mother have been preparing for Eman’s arrival, but are leaving some of the details about their shared bedroom to Eman.

“The bed is ready. Everything is ready,” Salma said. “We’re going to make it beautiful.”

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