by NISRIN ELAMIN
Earlier this year, the then White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, argued that the 109 airport detentions authorised under the first Muslim ban were a “minor inconvenience” to keep America safe. I was among those 109 people who were detained, questioned, handcuffed and body searched under the ban, and nothing about our experiences could be characterised as minor or inconvenient.
An Iraqi man who was detained with me at John F Kennedy airport in New York on the evening of January 27 had waited for two years to receive a visa that would reunite him with his wife and child. As his family waited on the other side of the airport border, I watched him grow increasingly anxious and distraught as he was denied a translator and told that he could be deported back to Iraq. A few hours later, a 76-year-old Sudanese man with health issues was detained in the same terminal and held for 30 hours without medical attention.
At Dulles Airport, some 400km away, a five-year-old boy with a US passport was detained and separated from his Iranian mother for several hours.
For every one of us who was detained at a US airport, many more were prevented from boarding their planes at terminals around the world. In total, more than 100,000 visas were revoked with the stroke of US President Donald Trump’s pen, and with it, hundreds and thousands of lives were altered and disrupted. In many ways, the mainstream media’s somewhat myopic focus on our detentions, particularly on the detentions of doctors and researchers like myself, masked this reality.
Thousands were separated from their family members, were forced to postpone weddings and important medical procedures, interrupted their studies and lost employment and life savings as a result of the first ban. Because the Muslim ban is also a refugee ban, thousands of refugees, who risked their lives to flee wars and political persecution, were denied safety and refuge after years of navigating a scrupulous, bureaucratic US visa process.
The irony, of course, is that the Trump administration intended to ban citizens of seven countries where US military interventions and policies have created some of the conditions that are forcing people to become refugees.
The curious case of Sudan and Chad
As the Trump administration attempted to implement the third version of the “Muslim ban” in mid-October, it intended to continue disrupting the lives of thousands with no regard for their safety, dignity or well-being.
But this latest iteration of the ban brings something else into focus as well, namely that this administration and its corporate partners intend to use citizens of the eight banned countries as bargaining chips to punish or blackmail their governments into playing by their rules.
The curious addition of Chad to the list of banned countries and Sudan’s removal from it highlights this point quite clearly.
On September 24, the Trump administration announced it would be suspending all non-immigrant and immigrant visas for citizens of Chad, which took Chadian officials and analysts by surprise. In a statement, the White House claimed that Chad “does not adequately share public safety and terrorism related information” and that “several terrorist groups are active within Chad or in the surrounding region, including elements of Boko Haram…”
This past March, Chad hosted the annual US-led Flintlock military exercise in West Africa, aimed at expanding the US’ military presence in Africa and at strengthening “joint counter-terrorism efforts against groups like Boko Haram”. Given Chad’s active role in leading counterterrorism efforts in partnership with the US and in facilitating the expansion of the US military in central Africa, one might ask, why was it added to the list of banned countries?
Al Jazeera for more