Love story interrupted: Memphis native's husband remains stuck in Syria 2 years after Trump's travel ban
"I just want him here," Yasmeen Sakaan says. "I miss him."
"Him" is her husband — her husband she hadn't seen for two years.
After two years apart, Sakaan, who lives in Memphis, visited Aleppo, Syria, this summer and was reunited with her husband, Amr Sankari. They spent two months together before it was time for Sakaan to leave, not knowing the next time she would see him again.
Sankari, 25, lives in war-torn Aleppo and hoped to find refuge in Memphis with his wife, but President Donald Trump’s travel ban has kept the two separated.
The couple are among thousands impacted by the 2017 Executive Order on Immigration, which restricts people from some majority-Muslim countries from coming to the United States.
Sakaan said the ban makes finding refuge “mission impossible” for her husband.
The Syrian Civil War
Sakaan, 22, was born in Memphis but moved to Syria, her parents' native country, at 6 years old.
She witnessed the Syrian Civil War firsthand.
The war began in March 2011 during the Arab Spring, a time of anti-government demonstrations in Middle Eastern and North African countries, as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which escalated into the ongoing war.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the war's death toll had risen above 500,000 as of 2018. And as of July, the war had displaced about 5.6 million Syrians, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports.
Sakaan's family was among the displaced.
During the war, Sakaan and her family vacationed in Lebanon for some time away from the devastation.
While they were there, the Syrian borders closed indefinitely, which forced Sakaan's family to resettle in Lebanon. They stayed there for three years.
"I don't know why they thought it would be a good idea to go," Sakaan said. "It was terrible timing."
As conditions in Syria worsened, Sakaan’s parents moved her back to Memphis with her brother and dad, whose store in Aleppo was bombed.
Now, she attends the University of Memphis, majoring in interior architecture, and works part time at Ali Baba Mediterranean Grill.
She dedicated her first year back in Memphis to working full time at Ali Baba and familiarizing herself with the city.
"When I first moved here, I didn’t know anyone,” Sakaan said. “It was a tough transition, plus I was out of school. My whole social life was at work. It was lonely."
While she got to know Memphis, she also got to know Sankari, through the phone.
They knew each other from high school in Syria, but they didn’t speak until after she was in America.
Sakaan eventually visited her family in Syria during summer 2017 and met with Sankari in person.
Sankari asked Sakaan’s parents for her hand in marriage, and they legally married that summer. But the idea of a wedding reception and ceremony was quickly set aside due to the war's intensifying conditions.
August crept in, and Sakaan said goodbye to her family and new husband to begin her first semester at U of M.
The same month, Sankari filed for a visa but didn't hear back until October 2017.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services denied his immigrant visa application along with 15,384 other applicants, according to a report from the Department of State.
Trump's executive order
In January 2017 Trump issued an executive order, “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.
Trump ordered the travel ban, often called the Muslim Ban, saying it would protect the U.S. from terrorists.
On June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the third rendition of the travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii by a 5-4 vote, restricting immigrants and some non-immigrants from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela from coming to America.
The ban devastated Sakaan’s and Sankari’s hopes to live together in Memphis.
For more than two years, the couple has searched for loopholes, but to no avail.
"We've done all the filing and all the things we're supposed to do," Sakaan said earlier this summer. "I haven't seen him since 2017. He’s in danger. Why has no one helped us?"
Sakaan and Sankari have contacted congressmen, senators, lawyers and the embassy for aid, but none have helped. One lawyer told them to "just wait it out."
"We contacted a lawyer here, who's known for helping out with a lot of cases related to the ban," Sakaan said. "He didn't give us much hope. He told us we just have to wait and that he's been dealing with a lot of other situations like ours."
Lily Axelrod, an immigration attorney at Siskind Susser PC in Memphis, said people subjected to the travel ban can apply for a waiver to prove “denying entry would cause undue hardship, entry would not pose a threat to national security or public safety of the U.S., and entry would be in the national interest.”
“Very few waivers are granted,” Axelrod said. “So, most people are stuck waiting for a new presidential administration to reverse the ban. There’s no appeal and no due process whatsoever.”
The Department of State received nearly 38,000 waiver applications in 2018, with State Department officers accepting 6% of the applicants.
Axelrod said she advises anyone affected by the ban to notify congressional representatives and to make their voice heard in upcoming elections.
She currently works with 14 asylum-seeking clients from Yemen, Syria, Libya and Venezuela.
The couple’s future
Trump's travel ban locks Sankari out of America, but U.S. citizens can still travel in and out of Syria even though the Department of State strongly advises against it.
Sakaan visited her husband this summer, the first time since 2017, and the visit slightly eased her mind.
Sankari got accepted into a university in Spain and hopefully will leave Syria soon, but if Trump lifts the ban, he will move to Memphis immediately.
Sakaan hopes to visit Spain once Sankari settles there, but she’s not sure she’ll visit Syria again, at least not while the war continues.
Now back in Memphis, she has started her junior year at U of M, as concerns for her husband’s safety continue to fog her mind.
“There are times where I don’t know what’s going on there, and it’s scary knowing he lives there,” Sakaan said. “Internet is cut off, electricity and power too. There are a lot of nights where he calls me and says, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to talk to you tomorrow because I’m hearing a lot of bombings.’ That freaks me out. Sometimes I won't hear from him for a while, and I worry.”