Jeremy Stahl writes in Slate about how confusion, international bureaucracy, and the criminal intransigence of Trump’s government about multiple court stays have trapped hundreds of people who should legally be able to fly to Boston’s Logan Airport, for days, in Djibouti.
Julie Goldberg, the lawyer for some of these stranded passengers, was unable to get Qatar Airlines to board her clients, even given a clear court order to the Trump administration that they instruct airlines to put them on the airplanes. She then filed suit in LA and got a court order that authorities must “immediately” be notified they must board her clients to LAX. And yet, still nothing happens.
Customs and Border Patrol hasn’t been talking to Stahl, and attempts to get information from Djibouti airline officials went from bad to worse. One man he read the court order to objected, “No, no. I’m afraid this is not accurate information, because we have the information coming from Customs and Border Protection agency in U.S. saying it gives us the categories of visas that are allowed to travel to the U.S.” Later, after Kafkaesque efforts to find another person to talk to, the man he finally, finally reached seemed suspicious and hostile: “Like I told you, I’m not going to give you any new information, Jeremy, because you are [not] known to me. You are not working for any airline authority. Whatever we follow the instructions given by the U.S. authorities.”
While the Trump administration makes no effort (to say the least ) to clear things up according to its court-ordered obligations, and airlines in Qatar won’t listen to anyone else, Goldberg is trying something else:
She's looking to charter a plane, if she can find a charter company brave enough, to fly (legally!) her clients and the other stranded Yemenis, some 240 people, to LAX, where the court says they must be admitted. And because these folks have spent all their money on tickets they can’t use, she’s crowdfunding it, through YouCaring.
I’ve pitched in, but this doesn’t seem to have come close to going viral yet. (Right now it’s just two of us!)
So, here is where to click to help charter a plane and get innocent people out of Trumpian limbo.
I don’t diary often. Hardly ever in the many years I've been here. But time’s critical.
