As the Trump administration continues to bar citizens of over a dozen foreign nations, local immigrant communities have been left feeling frustrated and fearful.
The travel ban, which expands on Trump’s efforts to ban nationals from several predominantly Muslim countries in his first term, now includes Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Fallout from the ban has reverberated through Fremont’s Centerville neighborhood, known as Little Kabul, which is home to many Afghan residents and businesses. The city drew waves of refugees after the armed conflict between the U.S. and Afghanistan in the early 2000s, and has become known as a cultural hub for Afghan-Americans.
G. Omar, who owns the Afghan Bazaar women’s clothing shop in Little Kabul, told Bay Area News Group the effects of the travel ban have been widely felt throughout the neighborhood and beyond.
“Of course everyone’s disappointed. At the end of the day, it hurts everybody. It hurts not only us, but it hurts America as a whole, as a nation,” said Omar, who runs the Afghan Bazaar women’s clothing shop in Little Kabul. “People come here for opportunity, safety, they want some sort of refuge. Immigrants, they’ve always made America stronger. It’s a loss for everyone.”
Omar, 46, asked only to be identified with the initial “G.” out of safety concerns.
Born in Afghanistan, Omar has lived in the U.S. since the 1980s, she said, and identifies with some of the “earlier families” who emigrated because of the Soviet occupation during the Soviet-Afghan War. She said she was not surprised Trump enacted a new ban, having previously said he would. But the ban’s effects are still widespread, she said.
“I imagine there’s thousands of other Afghans who have family that want to come here and they can’t,” Omar said.
She said her cousin had been trying for months to leave Afghanistan and make a new home for his family with his wife, young son and daughter in Fremont. But once Trump announced the new ban, their hopes of a fresh start in the Bay Area were squashed. Now her cousin is left reeling, trying to patch a new path to safety in Europe or elsewhere in the world, she said.
“It’s sad, it’s frustrating, and I don’t think it’s really a fair policy,” Omar said. “It’s unfortunate that other folks aren’t getting the same opportunities that my family got. I think it just really does undermine the whole idea and concept of what America is,” Omar said. “When people come here, they help the economy, they contribute, they enrich the communities.”
The Trump administration also announced it would end temporary protected status for Afghan nationals in the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said “there are notable improvements in the security and economic situation such that requiring the return of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan does not pose a threat to their personal safety due to armed conflict or extraordinary and temporary conditions,” according to a DHS notice from May.
The end of temporary protected status, first enacted in May 2022 and extended from September 2023 to May 20 of this year, took effect on July 14.
In Union City, Harris Mojadedi, an Afghan-American born in Fremont, said the feds are “creating chaos.”
“I would say our community definitely feels very much under attack and very much confused on who they can trust, what services they can navigate or what services are there for them because everything just seems to be all over the place,” Mojadedi said.
Mojadedi is an elected member of the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District board. He said the travel ban “feels like these are targeted attacks against many communities, with the Afghan American community being one of them.”
He said that Afghans, especially those who fought alongside the U.S. against the Taliban through various armed conflicts over the years, should be protected in the states.
“We made a promise to these refugees that if they fought alongside our veterans and soldiers that we would take care of them,” Mojadedi said. “Now we’re remaking that promise.”
Lawmakers throughout the country, including several representing the Bay Area, have condemned the travel ban and co-signed a letter to the Trump Administration from Senator Alex Padilla’s office demanding the ban be rescinded immediately.
The letter, penned to Trump, Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pamela Bondi, included signatures from Congressmembers Ro Khanna, Eric Swalwell, Lateefah Simon and Mark DeSaulnier alongside other prominent Democrats such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. The U.S. has issued over 126,000 visas in the last year to nationals from a dozen of the banned countries, the letter states, and “Trump’s actions once again disgrace the founding principles of our nation and enshrine cruelty into our immigration system.”
Stretching back to his first term, Trump ‘s travel bans have “wreaked havoc on families” and will “harm our economy by depriving the United States of workers in key fields experiencing labor shortages,” such as medicine, agriculture and tourism, lawmakers wrote.
In a statement, Khanna told this news organization that he will “proudly represent one of the largest immigrants communities in the country.”
“Trump’s travel ban hurts families and those who want to come to America to contribute to our economy and start a better life,” Khanna said. “We need a secure border and immigration reform, but this ban won’t fix the problems with the system.”