Abdullah Hassan, the two-year-old child whose Yemeni mother, Shaima Swileh, was nearly unable to visit because of Trump’s hideously racist travel ban, died on Friday. Abdullah and his father, Ali Hassan, are US citizens; his father brought the boy to receive medical treatment at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in California. His mother is a Yemeni citizen and was unable to join the two in the US due to Trump’s travel ban.
Abdullah was diagnosed with a genetic brain disorder. For the last few months of his life, he was in a hospital bed. Toward the end, when he was on life support, his mother finally won her battle to receive a visa waiver and gain approval to visit him in the states. Her visa was approved on December 18, and she traveled the very next day.
She made it just in time.
The family spent about ten days together.
Hassan gave a statement after their son’s death, thanking people for their support:
“We are heartbroken. We had to say goodbye to our baby, the light of our lives. We want to thank everyone for your love and support at this difficult time. We ask you to kindly keep Abdullah and our family in your thoughts and prayers.”
To review why this horrendous situation happened to begin with: Because Swileh is Yemeni, she can’t enter the US without a waiver. Yemen, along with Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Syria have a travel ban thanks to Trump (and later upheld by the Supreme Court) in an effort to reduce “terrorism.” This means that admission to the US from these countries has been really, really restricted.
Even though Swileh was living in Egypt and not Yemen, it didn’t matter in terms of her visa.
The family’s story first went viral as Swileh fought for the chance to see her son before he died. (For context, she’d even been fighting for a visa since 2017, so the entire family could move to the US).
Hassan did an interview with CNN just days before her visa was approved, saying:
“Time is running out for my son, to be honest. All she wishes is to see her son, and that’s it. We want to be together. All families, they’re supposed to be together. Right now, with my son’s situation, he’s facing death. I’m going through losing my son. It’s really hard for me and for my mother and for my family and my wife, too. It’s just really hard.”
“All she wishes is to hold his hand for the last time,” Hassan said in an interview before his wife was able to travel. “If I could take him off the ventilator and to the airplane, I would take him to her. I would let her see him. But he won’t make it.” Thankfully, she did.