As the ramifications of President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees continue to unfold, one group of Nashvillians is watching particularly closely.
Among the confusion of the fallout is whether permanent U.S. residents — green card holders — are included in the ban. That uncertainty has some people in Nashville’s Kurdish community in a panic.
On Saturday, Drost Kokoye heard from a man in Erbil, from Iraq, who lives in Nashville as a legal permanent resident. He was back in Iraq’s Kurdish region to visit family.
“He went back to the airport in Erbil to come back to Nashville, come back to the United States,” Kokoye said by phone on Sunday. “He was denied. They wouldn’t take his green card, so now he’s stuck in Erbil.”
Kokoye is with the American Muslim Advisory Council, which has been tracking cases like this and connecting people with lawyers.
This development has many Kurdish Americans confused and anxious, said Kasar Abdulla. She was one of the speakers at a large protest yesterday in Nashville, which is home to the largest Kurdish community in the U.S.
She said on Saturday, her neighbors starting calling with questions like, “‘I’m supposed to travel next week to Kurdistan, what does this mean?’ Or, ‘My family, I’m expecting this family to come, what do I do?'”
Abdulla later realized her own cousin is traveling to Kurdistan this week to bring back his fiancée, who recently received a green card. Now she’s not sure if either of them will be able to get out of Iraq. Her cousin is a naturalized U.S. citizen, but immigration lawyer Andrew Free said he would have advised even citizens this weekend against leaving U.S. soil.
“If you’re from one of the seven countries (in Trump’s executive order), you really need to make sure that you’ve thought about what you’re going to do if you’re not able to get back,” he said. He paused for a moment, and then: “It’s not something I ever thought I’d have to say.”
Still, Abdulla says even if her family ends up being fine because they already have papers, the executive order is sending a larger, more troubling message: that refugees are unwelcome in America — refugees like her and most of the Kurdish community in Nashville.
“We thought America was our friend. We thought we are American,” she said. “So does this naturalization paper … really mean something?”
Kurds are an ethnic minority who were violently persecuted under Saddam Hussein. Many relocated to Tennessee in the 1990s, where there’s now a vibrant community centralized in south Nashville.
But not everyone in that community is worried about the executive order. Kamal Hasan, who came to the U.S. as a Kurdish refugee 20 years ago and owns a market on Nolensville Pike, said he thinks Trump’s directive just needs to be clarified. If something in the order isn’t right, he said, he has faith that Congress or the legal system will stop it.
“I’m sure there’s maybe some reason or miscommunication between both governments,” he said. “That’s very important, the order, when the government is giving it, (that) everybody understands it.”
Correction: We originally misidentified the name of the group that Drost Kokoye is affiliated with. It is the American Muslim Advisory Council, not the American Center for Outreach.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM