Four-month-old Iranian girl misses open heart surgery because of Trump's travel ban

Thursday, 2 February 2017

Fatemah, a 4-month-old Iranian girl has missed an appointment for open heart surgery due to Trump's executive order barring foreigners from certain states from entering the United States.

Fatemah, who is in urgent need of the surgery, was scheduled to fly out to Oregon Health & Science University, in time for her surgery appointment, however, the trip was cancelled.

Her uncle, Sam Taghizadeh, speaking for the family, explained how hard getting a visa was and is disappointed that after going through such long process they still can't travel.

“For getting the visa, they ask for lot of the paperwork. You have to do many things, you know. For three weeks we working for every single thing they wanted. All the paper, everything was ready, and just in the last minute they cancelled everything.” 

“Half an hour, even they took the appointment out. I send an email, I tried calling them, nobody answered. But now she’s stuck,” he explained.

This is especially more devastating for them because Fatemah's grandparents are American citizens, yet their grandchild has to suffer and faces the risk of dying because she cannot get into their country. Taghizadeh lamented his niece's plight, saying;

“Why we came to U.S., we came here for freedom. For a better life. I’m feeling no where is safe.”