President Donald Trump’s ban sweeps into force as seven passengers destined for New York from Cairo were told that they could not get on their plane while tech giant Google has recalled its staff back to the USA. The passengers destined for the USA are being prevented from entering the country just hours after President Trump introduced the ban on Muslims.
Six Iraqis and a Yemeni were stopped from boarding a flight from Cairo, Egypt, to NEW York despite having valid visas to travel to USA. In a statement issued by Dutch Airline and KLM, they have had to turn away seven would-be passengers because they would no longer have been accepted into the US.
Manel Vrijenhoek, who is the KLM spokesperson made a statement saying that they would love to bring them to the US, adding that the problem was that the US sprang on the rest of the world that Muslims are no longer welcome. She also said that the seven were expected to fly with KLM from different airports around the world to the US.
The spokesperson also pointed out that she had no specifics on their nationalities. However, she confirmed that they were from countries that have been affected by the three-month immigration ban-Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
There has been a lot of panic that has been sparked after the ban came into effect at 4:30 pm with many passengers left in legal limbo as to whether or not their valid visas would be accepted if they tried to enter the US.
In a report issued by the New York Times, two Iraqi men, who had valid visas were detained by border guards when they landed in New York. One of the men was Hammed Khalid Darweesh who works as an interpreter for the US government in Iraq, he was later released in the afternoon.
The second man Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who still remains in custody as lawyers argue for his release. The tech giant Google has also recalled all its staff travelling abroad back to America over visa fears.
A report by Bloomberg News indicated that a memo sent to Google’s staff stated that over 100 employees were affected by the situation. The tech giant’s CEO Sundar Pichai wrote the memo in which he said that it’s painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on Google’s staff.
