Ebrahim Musleh Mohamed

“I want to assert my rights and the rights of my children and my family. We suffer a lot because of the separation between my children and my wife. My children ask why their mother cannot come here, they do not understand that there is nothing I can do. Please help me reunite with my family as soon as possible.”

 Ebrahim Mohamed is a US citizen who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He married his wife, Eman, in Yemen in October 2008. Together, they have three children, all of whom are US citizens. Because of the Muslim Ban, Eman is forced to be apart from her husband and children.

In September 2015, Ebrahim filed a petition seeking a visa for his wife to join him in the United States. After waiting for two years, Eman was scheduled for an interview at the Embassy in Djibouti. Ebrahim travelled to Yemen to accompany his family to Djibouti, which was an arduous trip that lasted two weeks and cost more than $10,000. After the interview in November 2017, a consular officer told Eman that her visa was approved and gave her an approval slip and took her passport. The family waited for months for the visa. Eman was pregnant at this time and needed to travel to Egypt for urgent medical care she could not find in Djibouti. In March 2018, the Embassy returned Eman’s passport so that she could travel, but issued a letter stating that her application for a US visa had been denied due to the Muslim Ban, and she would not be granted a waiver.

 Eman gave birth to the couple’s third son in 2018 in Cairo. Ebrahim left Egypt to return to the United States so he can work to provide for her family, and Eman, still without a US visa, returned to Sana’a, Yemen with her youngest son. Ebrahim’s two eldest sons live in Brooklyn with their grandmother, because Ebrahim works long hours and is unable to care for them full-time.

 The family is desperately waiting for this nightmare to be over and to be together again. Ebrahim is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and is a plaintiff in Dobashi v. Trump.

Update: The family was reunited in November of 2019.