Five days since a federal judge overruled Trump’s travel ban, a 4-year old girl reunites with her mother

Samira Dahir with her daughters, Mumtaz, 7, Mushkaad, 4, and Mueahib, 8, in their home in Minneapolis. (The Washington Post)

By: Abdikadir Ukash

NAIROBI—Five days since a judge at a federal court in Seattle overruled US President Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries, a 4-year old Somali girl has reunited with her mother in Minneapolis.

Samira Dahir had been waiting for her daughter, Mushkaad since she left a Ugandan refugee camp five years ago.

“Mushkaad had gotten her hair braided and henna on her hands for the occasion. She wore a white dress her mother had sent from Minneapolis,” Samira narrated to the  Washington Post.

The mother of three daughters was informed late on December last year that her daughter, who she’d left while she was five months old, was cleared to join her in the US and since then, preparation to receive Mushkaad was in high gear until one night last week when she received a call from a cousin in Africa.

She could not believe that Trump order would not allow her daughter to enter the United States because Mushkaad is from one of the countries affected by the President’s executive order that barred people from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Libya and Sudan.

“Immediately (I received the shocking news) I started trying to figure out how to get my daughter to the United States.

The next few days became an round-the-clock saga that went from the offices of lawyers and social-service groups in Minneapolis to the U.S. Senate to the Department of Homeland Security,” Samira Dahir explained.

Finally on Friday, Mushkaad joined her mother and two siblings —Mueahib, 8, and Mumtaz, 7 when the plane that she was aboard touched down on the St. Paul International Airport.

“The first thing she told me was that she wanted to stay with me,” Samira said, excited by her daughter’s expression and how she’d grown up so soon.

“I don’t think [the Trump administration] would ever expect, with the stroke of a pen, an executive order would put all of these families in peril,” Klobuchar, a Democratic legisltor said.

“We have a family of U.S. residents, lawfully residing, and they’re missing a daughter. It’s in the national interest to have families unified,” McAleenan, the acting director of U.S. Customs and Border Patrotold the Washington Post  late Friday that his agency learned of Mushkaad’s case through the two senators— Franken (D) and Amy Klobuchar (D).

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson cited Mushkaad’s case in a suit she filed against the Trump administration that contends the executive order unconstitutional.