UPDATED: Iraqi Translator Released After Being Detained Under Trump Immigration Ban

President’s Executive Order Prompts Legal Challenges

UPDATE, 1 p.m., Jan. 28: New York Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler reported on Twitter that Darweesh has been released. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf for Darweesh and Alshawi. 

ORIGINAL POST: 

Migrants who were in the air when President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries on Friday are already being detained at US airports. 

They include Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who worked on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq for 10 years and was detained Saturday morning at Kennedy Airport in New York City. 

Attorneys representing Darweesh and another Iraqi refugee immediately filed legal challenges seeking their release, according to The New York Times. A writ of habeas corpus filed on behalf of Darweesh states that he was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20, the same day as Trump’s inauguration.

“He worked with the United States in Iraq in a variety of jobs — as an interpreter, engineer and contractor — over the course of roughly a decade,’ the NYT reports. “Mr. Darweesh worked as an interpreter for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad and Mosul starting shortly after the invasion of Iraq on April 1, 2003. The filing said that he was directly targeted twice for working with the American military.”

The other refugee whose detention is being challenged, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the United States to join his wife, who had worked for a US contractor, and young son, the NYT reports. Attorneys for the two men were barred from meeting with their clients. Instead, Customs and Border Protection agents allegedly told them to, “Call Mr. Trump.” 

Meanwhile, seven U.S.-bound migrants from Iraq and Yemen were prevented from boarding a flight in Cairo on Saturday, according to airport officials.  

“The officials said the action Saturday by the airport was the first since President Donald Trump imposed a three-month ban on refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen,” the Associated Press reports.