140 Somali refugees set to leave for US sent back to camp
NAIROBI, Kenya — About 140 Somali refugees whose resettlement in the United States this week was stopped by President Donald Trump’s executive order have been sent back to their refugee camp instead, one of the refugees said Saturday.
It was not clear why they were returned a day after a U.S. court order blocked Trump’s ban on travellers and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Somalia. Officials with the International Organization for Migration, which runs the transit centre in Nairobi where the refugees had been waiting for their flights to the U.S., could not be reached for comment.
“How would you feel? One day you are telling friends bye, wishing them well, and the next you are back where you started,” 28-year-old Nadir Hassan told The Associated Press by phone from the camp. “My home for 27 years was a refugee camp. I was hoping to start a new life in the U.S., get an education, a job, a life. We feel bad.”
He had been on a waiting list to leave for about a decade, he said.