Tufaic Mohamed Nagi

"The government is separating kids from their mothers and fathers. It's too hard to have to explain to my son why his mother cannot come here. Today, it is the Muslim Ban, but tomorrow it might be something even worse."

Tufaic Mohamed Nagi is a 33-year old U.S. citizen who has lived here since he was born. He resides in Dearborn, Michigan, and currently works as a truck driver. Tufaic married his wife, Alshaibah, in 2005, and she continued to live in Yemen afterwards, and he would go back and forth between the U.S. and Yemen to support his family. They have an eleven-year-old son, Mohamed, who is also a U.S. citizen. In 2016, due to the escalating war and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, Tufaic applied for a visa to bring Alshaibah to the U.S. so she could be safe and have more opportunity to thrive. Her petition was granted, and she travelled to the U.S. Embassy in Djibouti for her interview in October 2017. Following her interview, a consular office told her that her file was complete and that her visa was approved and provided her with a notice stating that the visa was approved. Four months later, in March 2018, the Embassy contacted her and issued her a refusal letter informing her that her visa application had been refused pursuant to the Muslim Ban. 

Alshaibah was forced to return to Yemen due to financial hardship and the high cost of living in Djibouti, a desperate situation faced by many other Yemeni-American families since the Ban went into effect. Tufaic has spent nearly $30,000 in support of his wife’s visa application process and exhausted his savings and borrowed money from friends and family. She currently lives in an area of Yemen controlled by a militia group, and fears for her life. He has not seen her since his last trip to Yemen in 2014, and she hasn’t seen their son Mohamed since 2015, when he was only 7 years old.

Yemeni-American families like the Nagis are forced to live between the Muslim Ban and Yemen’s war. Tufaic and his son are waiting to be reunited with their wife and mother. Tufaic is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and is a plaintiff in Dobashi v. Trump. 

Update: Afshaibah received his visa and came to the United States in November of 2019.