Majid Tawouz and his five children have refugee status. They were prepared to emigrate from a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey to the United States until President Trump’s refugee travel ban went into effect. (Louisa Loveluck/The Washington Post)

Last month, the Tawouz family were told a new life in the United States was just days away. Last week, they learned they were no longer welcome. And by Saturday, they had no idea what to believe.

Four years after they fled the bombs of Aleppo, Syria, despair turned to joy as they heard that a federal judge had blocked enforcement of President Trump’s controversial entry ban on refugees and nationals of seven ­majority-Muslim nations, their family among them.

But as the day wore on, the clouds of uncertainty crept back.

“We’ve been hopeful, we’ve been devastated. Now we just don’t know,” said Majid Tawouz, a father of five, reached by phone in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

Tawouz and his five children are among the thousands left in limbo after a Jan. 27 executive order barred nationals from the seven countries from entering the United States, suggesting they could be a threat to national security. The order also explicitly banned Syrian refugees indefinitely.

The news Friday that U.S. District Judge James L. Robart had temporarily blocked that order has left the refugees in a bind: Hope too much and risk devastation when resettlement is blocked again; don’t hope at all and risk giving up altogether.

[Travelers rush from banned countries: ‘No one knows how long the window will last’]

Their bags had been packed and were nearly bursting on the morning in late January when they learned they would not need them. The official who called said that he was sorry and that he was just doing his job. “He just kept apologizing and saying these were orders from above,” Tawouz said.

“I asked them how I could explain this to my daughter. We had told her a plane would take her to a place she could get treatment,” he said.

For Wajeeha, 11, the suspension meant an indefinite wait for hormone treatment that the family cannot afford in Turkey, leaving her in pain and unable to grow. For her younger brother, it meant longer until a doctor can explain why his bones have grown curved.

Syria’s almost six-year-long crisis has pushed at least 4.5 million refugees into Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. With limited rights to work and education, many now struggle badly to make ends meet.

The United States had resettled more than 15,000 Syrians, most arriving within the past year. Although the State Department said it did not publicly disclose figures for the number of Syrian families affected by the suspension, aid officials suggested it was in the thousands. According to the United Nations’ refugee agency, more than 800 — of all nationalities — had been set to make the United States their home this past week alone.

The program focused on resettling those requiring urgent medical or psychological treatment, and households headed by vulnerable women.

[Trump’s executive order barred Iranian baby in need of heart surgery]

Now stuck in limbo, Syrian families interviewed last week spoke of heartbreak, exhaustion and fear.

In Jordan, Mohammed Hassoun, tortured for six months in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s prison network, described the suspension as a “dagger” to his dreams. In Lebanon, a young woman — speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear for the safety of her husband, still in the notorious Damascus jail from which she had been freed — said that she had spent the week mired in depression. “You cannot understand the haze that I feel. I lost my husband, then I lost my future,” she said.

But for Trump supporters, the ban represented a promise kept. During campaign rallies, he repeatedly claimed that Islamist militants were posing as refugees to enter and attack U.S. cities — a claim yet to be proved. That logic was echoed in Trump’s executive order, which said the president himself would be the judge of whether “sufficient changes” had been made to the vetting process.

Current and former officials involved in the 21-stage admissions process for Syrian refugees said it was unclear what further checks could be introduced to improve the system.

“This is a process that was already adapting. Over the years we brought on more and more steps as the situation evolved,” said Natasha Hall, a former immigration officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Turkey. These included new questions, additional layers of vetting, formal training to help interviewers identify a variety of potential “red flags,” and introducing new questions.

An aid official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivities surrounding the suspension, said last week that U.N. officials would probably be expected to sort through already-vetted case files to identify the most vulnerable families for referral to another nation’s resettlement program. In other words, Hall said, “strains on an already deeply strained system.”

[After four years and Trump’s travel ban, a child meets her family]

In Ankara, the Tawouz family waited anxiously for news late Saturday in their extended family’s cramped apartment.

“We left Syria so our children would have a future, and after everything we went through, we thought we had finally got it,” Majid Tawouz said. “They thought they’d get treated and go to school again.”

Moments later, Wajeeha’s small voice echoed down the phone line. “I was so excited, but now I just feel sad,” she said. “Baba told me there aren’t planes for people like us anymore. Why don’t they want us?”

Zakaria Zakaria reported from Istanbul. Taylor Luck in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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