Sudi Wardere was expecting her first child when she petitioned for a family-based immigrant visa that would allow her husband to join her in the United States.
That was two years ago. As an American citizen and resident of Washington state, Wardere did not think that she would find herself still waiting, left alone to raise her 14-month-old son.
Her husband, a Somali national, remains in limbo – one of the many immigrants whose path to the US became far more arduous after the supreme court ruled to uphold Donald Trump’s travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.
Wardere arrived in the US when she was 10 and was raised just outside Seattle. Her story is also about the ways in which the Trump administration has sought to block legal immigrants from crossing America’s borders.
“I feel like a second-class citizen,” Wardere said. “I’m stuck over here with our son, who hasn’t even seen his father.”
Wardere is one of 36 plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit on behalf of individuals who claim visa applications were wrongfully denied or stalled by the US government’s failure to grant case-by-case waivers from the travel ban.
The amended complaint, filed last month by groups including Muslim Advocates and the Immigrant Advocacy & Litigation Center, was the first challenge to the travel ban since the supreme court affirmed the legality of Trump’s action on 26 June.
Immigration advocates say a pattern has emerged in which the Trump administration has attempted to cut back legal immigration by gutting existing programs and making citizenship much less obtainable.
“The overall picture is one of extreme hostility with no distinction between the undocumented and those who are legally here,” said Joshua Hoyt, co-chair of the National Partnership for New Americans.
The past year and a half has seen a series of proposals – some threatened, others already realized – that make good on Trump’s pledge to sharply restrict immigration.
Under the stewardship of attorney general Jeff Sessions and White House adviser Stephen Miller, who have both long opposed the system that cemented America’s legacy as a nation of immigrants, other steps have targeted those already here.
Last week, immigration advocates sounded the alarm over a pending proposal that would make it harder for legal immigrants to obtain green cards or citizenship if they have ever used government programs such as the Affordable Care Act, food stamps and children’s health insurance. According to a report by NBC News, the Trump administration was expected to issue the new rule in the coming weeks, affecting around 20 million immigrants.
Elsewhere, spouses of those on high-skilled immigrant visas were still awaiting their fate as the administration prepared to revoke authorization to work in the US. The proposed rules change, which is expected any day, would affect tens of thousands of immigrant spouses, most women.
Trump has directed much of his rhetoric in recent months to so-called “chain migration”, the process by which US citizens or legal residents can sponsor family members to come to the country. Several immigration proposals pushed by the White House have called for an end to the practice, which the president has called a national security threat.
In fact, numerous studies have demonstrated that immigrants in the US are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born population.
The Trump White House has also been accused of hypocrisy for taking advantage of the very same immigration processes it is seeking to abolish. Miller, the architect of Trump’s most aggressive anti-immigration moves, was condemned by his maternal uncle in a scathing op-ed published on Monday.
Pointing out that Miller has benefited from family-based immigration, David S Glosser, wrote: “I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.”
Last week, it was also reported that Melania Trump’s parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, became US citizens in a private naturalization ceremony in New York City. The Knavs were also the product of family-based immigration, their daughter having sponsored their green-card applications.
“The administration is making the population of the undocumented grow by forcing people back into the shadows and creating pain for legal immigrants that can only be described as cruel,” said Hoyt.
A hardline immigration agenda was not only a pillar of Trump’s campaign, but in many ways the vehicle through which he bested establishment-backed Republican opponents who advocated for a friendlier view toward the issue.
While orthodox Republicans have long focused on pro-immigration arguments with an economic lens, Trump successfully seized on a backlash within the Republican base to transform much of the party in his protectionist mold.
Immigration has emerged as a top priority for voters ahead of the midterm elections in November. Polling shows Republicans firmly behind even the more controversial of Trump’s policies.
Despite a national outcry over the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border, a majority of Republican voters said they backed the move. Surveys have similarly shown broad support among Republicans for the travel ban and efforts to crack down on immigration – legal or illegal.
The shift has prompted Republican leaders in Congress to try to enact Trump’s immigration priorities even when they have disapproved of his approach.
A Republican proposal to end family separations at the border in June included funding for Trump’s wall along the US-Mexico border, new restrictions on family-based legal immigration and an end to the visa lottery program. Lacking sufficient support, the measure never made it to the floor of the House.
Republicans also insisted on conservative immigration priorities earlier this year as part of negotiations on legislation to protect Dreamers – young undocumented migrants brought to the US as children – which similarly ended in gridlock.
After the supreme court ruled on Trump’s travel ban, immigration advocates poured cold water on the notion that a Republican-controlled Congress would overturn the policy.
Expressing his disappointment with the decision, Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said: “I’m a realist when it comes to legislation on the floor of the Senate and the House … It’s doubtful that anything is going to move forward.”
The Trump administration has seized on congressional inaction to retool existing immigration laws and how they are enforced.
An official with the Department of Homeland Security said the administration “is always in the process of considering and evaluating an array of measures to better align US immigration policy with federal law, consistent with the constitutional duty to faithfully executive the laws of the United States”.
Civil liberties nonetheless maintain the Trump administration is ignoring regular channels and procedures.
“The policies the administration is seeking to institute are contrary both to the intent of existing immigration laws and to how experts say they should be administered,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s immigrants’ rights project.
The ACLU has led several lawsuits challenging the Trump administration on immigration; while the travel ban ruling ranks among its most notable upsets, the group has successfully led the charge in forcing the administration to reunite families separated at the border.
“The administration has made very clear by its actions that it’s fundamentally opposed to immigration in whatever form – whether it’s legal immigration or undocumented immigration,” Jadwat said.
“But monkeying around with the rules when people’s lives are at stake is not going to be successful in withstanding a challenge.”