HARTFORD, Conn. _ Fadi Kassar paid $1,000 to book an earlier flight for his wife and two daughters, hoping to get them to the United States before President Donald Trump blocked Syrian refugees from coming here.
But Kassar, a Milford resident who fled the war-torn country and has been separated from his family for more than two years, was too late. His wife and the girls, ages 5 and 8, were stopped from boarding their plane and forced to return to an empty apartment in Jordan, where they had been staying.
"They're back in their old apartment, these two little girls are, but they got rid of all their furniture," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who is working to reunite the family, said in a speech on the Senate floor Monday night. "They got rid of all their clothes. Their neighbors have temporarily given them mattresses to sleep on. They don't even know where their suitcases are. And their father, who was ready to greet them at the airport here in the United States, may never see them. They are scared to death."
Murphy, who spoke while standing next to a large photograph of the two girls, said Kassar "went through all the processes we asked him to," applying for asylum and filling out forms so his wife and two daughters could join him. His family was granted visas on Jan. 24. They were stopped in the airport in Kiev, Ukraine, three days later after Trump signed an executive order blocking travel from Syria and other majority-Muslim countries.
"Imagine what those two little girls went through," said Murphy, who has two boys the same age as Kassar's daughters. The girls "had in their mind this place called America, a place that would welcome them," Murphy said. "And imagine that dream that was literally hours away for these two little girls extinguished."
