On his way home from his wedding, an Illinois physician was prevented from boarding his flight and his visa was cancelled.
By Jennifer Gonnerman / The New Yorker
February 1, 2017
Editor’s note: Since this piece was published, Dr. Amer Al Homssi has been cleared to enter the U.S. On Wednesday evening, his lawyers said that he had boarded a flight in Abu Dhabi.
Early on Sunday morning, Dr. Amer Al Homssi walked into Abu Dhabi International Airport with a ticket for a 4 a.m. flight to Chicago. He had flown in from Chicago, eleven days earlier, to get married. Now Al Homssi, who is twenty-four and a resident in internal medicine, needed to get back to his job, at the University of Illinois College of Medicine/Advocate Christ Medical Center, in Oak Lawn, Illinois. When he arrived at the airport, he had an Illinois driver’s license and valid J-1 visa to work in the United States. But he was born in Syria and carries a Syrian passport. Al Homssi was not permitted to board the airplane.
A lawsuit, filed on his behalf in federal court in Illinois yesterday, states that, at the Etihad Airways counter, an airline representative noticed his Syrian passport and made a call. The representative checked his luggage, but told him to go to U.S. pre-clearance to receive approval to leave the country. At U.S. pre-clearance, a security officer “took his passport, his form DS-2019 (a supplementary document to his J-1 visa), and his boarding pass,” according to the complaint. “The officer took his fingerprints and then ordered him to a secondary security check room.”
There, another officer searched his phone, wallet, and luggage, and reviewed his school transcript and work contract. The officer asked a few questions, “but no questions about whether Dr. Al Homssi was affiliated in any way with a designated terrorist organization.” Finally, a third officer told Al Homssi that he was being refused entry because of President Trump’s executive order, which bars citizens of Syria and six other Muslim-majority countries for the next ninety days. Al Homssi was escorted out, allowed to get his luggage, and given his passport back. According to his lawsuit, “When Dr. Al Homssi looked at his passport, he noticed that the J-1 visa page had been marked diagonally with a fat black marker pen drawn through it, and in blue pen along that black mark, it was written: ‘Cancelled E.O. 59447v.8.’ ”
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