Mother was unable to join toddler because of Trump’s order barring most citizens from several Muslim-majority countries

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A mother from Yemen has been granted a visa to see her dying toddler in California after US officials issued a waiver from its ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, supporters said.

Two-year-old Abdullah Hassan, a US citizen like his father, suffers from a rare genetic brain condition and is on life support in a hospital in Oakland, California.

But his mother, Shaima Swileh, was unable to join him because of Donald Trump’s order barring most citizens from six countries, including Yemen.

After a tearful televised plea from the boy’s father, the US embassy in Cairo issued a visa for Swileh, who has been staying in Egypt as she tries to fly to the United States.

She will arrive in San Francisco late on Wednesday, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim civil rights group that assisted the family.

“This is the happiest day of my life,” her husband, Ali Hassan, said in a statement.

“This will allow us to mourn with dignity.”

Hassan said he had been ready to take his son off life support last week after doctors said the case was terminal, with his wife only receiving automated replies when inquiring with US authorities on her visa application.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations launched a campaign that it said prompted 15,000 emails to elected officials as well as thousands of tweets.

Abdullah’s grandfather earlier told the San Francisco Chronicle that Swileh was crying every day as she wanted to see her son “one last time”.

“To hold him for at least a minute. She’s not going to see him forever,” he said.

Until the media attention, the family said it kept receiving automated responses from US authorities that their case was being processed.

Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat who represents Oakland, took up the case and said it showed how Trump’s travel ban was “inhumane and un-American”.

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“As a member of Congress, and a mother myself, the cruelty of barring a mother from reuniting with a sick child takes my breath away,” she tweeted late on Monday.

Trump vowed during the 2016 campaign to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, despite constitutional protections of freedom of religion, after a mass shooting in California by a couple of Pakistani descent.

She voiced relief at the waiver but added: “So many families are still torn apart by the heinous travel ban.”

“We can’t stop until we end this un-American policy for good,” she wrote on Twitter.

A state department spokesman, Robert Palladino, voiced sympathy for the family in the “very sad case”.

But he said that visas are “decided on a case-by-case basis” in accordance with US laws.

The state department is “ensuring the integrity and security of our country’s borders and at the same time making every effort to facilitate legitimate travel to the United States”, he told reporters.

“These are not easy questions.”

But such exceptions to Trump’s ban are exceedingly rare. The American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes Trump’s order, said that only 2% of applicants have been granted waivers.

In an executive order that triggered chaos before court challenges and revisions, Trump blocked new visas to nearly all citizens of five Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen – as well as North Korea.

A divided supreme court in June upheld the ban, which it said was within the president’s powers.