A Pennsylvania couple who waited hours on Saturday to greet their relatives from Syria, only to learn that they had been turned away by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents despite their visas, voted for President Donald Trump.
Six members of the Assali family were detained at Philadelphia International Airport after security guards asked whether they were Syrians, Sarmad Assali said in an interview with "NBC Nightly News."
The incident happened just hours after Trump signed an executive order that barred people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days. The president has said repeatedly that the order is meant to protect the nation from extremists.
Sarmad Assali and her husband, Allentown dentist Ghassan Assali, voted for Trump in November, according to "NBC Nightly News."
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"I understand he wants to make America safe. We're all on with this," Sarmad Assali said. "I definitely want to be in a safe place, but people need us and we need to be there for them."
Sarmad Assali's two brothers, their wives and their two teenage children spent 18 hours flying to the U.S. and, within two hours of landing in Philadelphia, were sent back to cover the same journey in reverse, attorney Jonathan Grode said.
"They had immigrant visas to arrive in the United States," Grode said Sunday. "They were not allowed to enter the United States and their visas have been canceled."
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Sarmad and Ghassan Assali bought and furnished a home for their relatives in anticipation of their arrival on Saturday. The reunion has been in the making since 2003, when the Syrian-based Assalis started the paperwork needed to get immigration visas.
"This is not American," Ghassan Assali said Sunday. "It is like ISIS. Now they ask, 'Are you Christian? What do you believe?' … America acts (like) the same thing now, they ask, 'Are you Muslim?'"
Sarmad and Ghassan Assali are Christian and have called Allentown home since 1978, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
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"We've done everything by the book and by the rules," Sarmad Assali said Sunday. "I'm heartbroken because they had to be sent back to the war zone, and we were so excited to have them."
An attorney for the family, Susan Wild, wrote Monday on a GoFundMe page launched to help the family fight the decision that customs officials declined to resolve the issue. The ACLU of Pennsylvania said on Tuesday that it filed suit on behalf of the Assalis and two other families who were detained at Philadelphia's airport.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has thrown his support behind the Assalis. He said Sunday that the situation marked "a dark day for all of us that their family was treated this way."
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"As a Pennsylvanian and an American, this is not who we are," he said. "The United States was set up to be a place where people could escape oppression. This is not a place people come to experience oppression, and that's what (the Assali) family members experienced."
He said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro joined 16 other attorneys general nationwide who are questioning Trump's order.
"I don't think the president thought this through," he said.
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