‘Finally here’: Refugee reaches US ahead of travel ban rules
SAN DIEGO — Ali Said fled war-torn Somalia two decades ago after his right leg was blown off by a grenade. Last year, the father of seven was shot in his other leg by robbers while living in a Kenyan refugee camp.
Said rolled his wheelchair up to a desk in an office hours after arriving in California from Kenya, saying he felt unbelievably lucky: He and his family are among the last refugees allowed into the United States before the Trump administration’s latest travel ban rules kick in.
“Until this moment, in this interview, I still don’t believe that I’m in the United States,” Said told The Associated Press through a translator Thursday at the International Rescue Committee’s office in San Diego, smiling while his two sons hung at the back of his wheelchair.
“So during the flight, we all were saying that we are in a dream and it’s not true yet until we finally landed at LAX, and we all said to each other: ‘Yeah, we’re finally here. We made it,’” he said.