The family started dancing when they heard the news.

Over a grainy video call from his home in Omaha, 19-year-old Zak Abughalyoon could hear his cousins playing music in their small apartment in Jordan, their shrieks of celebration.

The endless appointments and interviews and medical exams – the cost of securing refugee status – had caused Zak’s two oldest cousins to lose their jobs, the main source of income for their family of eight.

But it was OK. Soon, they’d be in America.

It was a journey the family knew well. Nine years ago, the Abughalyoons – Zak, his father Farhan and mother Hanaa Alsmail, and his three siblings – made the trek from Syria to a refugee camp in Jordan to Omaha. 

Now, his seven cousins and their mother Faten, the Abughalions, would be joining them here. The U.S. government had granted their refugee application mere days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

That is what they believed, until a United Nations worker delivered the update: There would be no flight to Omaha. There would be no reunion.

Hours after being sworn in, Trump signed an executive order bringing U.S. refugee resettlement to an immediate halt.

More than 10,000 refugees who had already been approved to enter the country had their flights abruptly canceled. 

In Nebraska, this meant an Afghan soldier already living in Lincoln would not be reunited with his wife and children. They were barred from boarding their flight out of Afghanistan.

It meant a Venezuelan family found their plan to travel to Columbus suddenly canceled. Catholic Social Services in Lincoln had to break the news to the family friend and military veteran sponsoring them.

At least 275 refugees already had their visas approved and their flights booked to Nebraska when they got the news.

That number includes the eight members of the Abughalion family – the two branches of the family spell their names differently in English, but pronounce them the same.

They had already started studying the language. They’d already sold off belongings too big to take on the flight that they now won’t be taking for the foreseeable future.

“They are devastated and cut off at the knees,” said Jennifer Mangan, one of the six private sponsors who’d signed on to support Zak’s cousins. “The U.S. made a promise to them. And we broke our promise.”

The Loved Ones Who Escaped

In the summer of 2011, the Syrian civil war was descending on the city of Homs, where the Abughalyoon family lived.

Food was growing scarce. Ali Abughalion, Farhan’s brother and Faten’s husband, would drive his truck to surrounding towns to bring back supplies and food, smuggling soldiers their favorite foods and teas so they’d let him pass through their checkpoints.

The family had hammered down a wall of their home to build a makeshift bomb shelter. One night, an explosive flew through the window but didn’t explode. Another time, the family caught soldiers planting a mine near their house to hit a nearby tank. Ali rushed outside and yelled for them to stop.

It was time to leave Homs.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins loaded what belongings they could into trucks. They drove dirt roads in the middle of the night, hoping to avoid the raging war.

It worked until bullets started flying. The men, who were holding onto the outside bars of the trucks, threw themselves to the ground and crawled into the tall grass on the edge of the road. Sitting on the roof of one truck, 6-year-old Zak and his cousin pulled nearby pots onto their heads. Then someone yanked them to safety on the ground.

Family members in another truck, led by Ali, fled to a nearby house.

Outside, they heard an officer say: “Shoot that house.”

Ali ran out with his hands up.

It’s just my family, he said. My mother can’t walk.

A man popped out of the tank that was poised to shoot. “Commander, I know this person,” he said. “He’s my friend.” Ali was the one who smuggled the tank crewmember’s favorite tea past military checkpoints.

The connection let the family escape.

They ended up in Aleppo, but the war followed them. Again, the bombing started. Again, Ali drove his truck to buy bread for the neighborhood.

The bombing got so bad that after a few months, the family returned to Homs.

Farhan started working again in his welding shop. One day, he went across the street to visit his friend’s car wash. While he was there, the Syrian Arab Army, then under the control of dictator Bashar al-Assad, came to the store. They pointed guns at Farhan and the car wash owner, ordered them to load all the gas and supplies into their trucks. Then they told Farhan and the store owner to get in the truck too.

They ended up at a building manned by guards. Inside, it had been turned into a prison. Farhan saw the kitchen – the room was covered in blood.

Farhan’s neighbor heard he’d been taken. He sped to the building, argued with and yelled at military officers for hours to let Farhan go. At one point, an angry officer fired machine gun rounds over everyone’s heads. More arguing – the car wash owner wanted back what had been taken from his store.

In the end, they released only one man. Farhan.

“At that point, we knew, let’s just get out of here,” Zak said.

Farhan, his wife Hanaa, and their four kids Mohammad, Zak, Badreya and Hanin fled Homs, leaving just before soldiers raided their home.

They traveled to the Jordanian border by bus. To cross the border, they walked 9 miles at night through a rocky desert. Steps in, Badreya’s shoes let off a flicker of rainbow light. They’d forgotten the 4-year-old wore light-up sneakers. 

The group of 40 people panicked. The child’s shoes could get them killed. 

So Farhan carried Badreya. Hanaa carried 3-month-old Hanin. The two older brothers carried whatever luggage they could.

As they walked, a bomb fell on the house they’d been staying in hours earlier.

At the border, the family of six lived in a dusty, crowded refugee camp. After a few months in their small tent, they moved to Mafraq, Jordan.

There, Farhan took whatever welding jobs he could find. Mohammad and Zak, 11 and 9, both quit school, working overnight shifts in convenience stores, butcher shops and malls to help support their family.

After four years in Jordan, Farhan got the call from the United Nations. They’d made it through the waiting list to travel to the U.S. as refugees.

At first, he thought the family should stay in Jordan. His parents were there. So was the other branch of the family, his brother Ali’s wife and her seven children.

At the last minute, he changed his mind. He needed to take his wife and four children to a country with more opportunities.

You’re going to Nebraska, an aid worker told Farhan.

“What is Nebraska?”

“We tried to pull up some facts about Nebraska,” Zak said. “The only thing that came up was the Missouri River.”

“And corn,” Mohammad added.

The Helpers Who Helped

More than 6,500 miles away in Omaha, Rosie Volkmer watched the war raging in Syria, as did her fellow congregants at St. Pius X Catholic Church.

St. Pius has a long history of sponsoring refugees. When Rosie joined the parish in 1976, the church was sponsoring a Vietnamese family. Then came families from Laos, Poland, Burma. 

The church plays a small role in Nebraska’s historically large refugee resettlement. From 2013 to 2023, 7,450 refugees arrived in Nebraska.

The state consistently settles the most refugees per capita in the country.  

Watching what was happening in Syria, Rosie thought, “It’s time, isn’t it?”

The parish agreed.

The Abughalyoons stepped off the plane days after Trump was first elected in 2016. In a matter of months, he would cut off refugee resettlement, along with travel from Muslim countries like Syria.

The six family members arrived in Omaha knowing how to say only hi, bye and thank you in English. They didn’t know if anyone would be there to greet them.

A group of about 15 people from St. Pius was waiting for them at Eppley Airfield.

The helpers moved the family to a rented house down the street from the church. The Syrian family marveled at the homes built from wood, rather than cement.

“If a tornado comes, the houses will fly away,” Zak remembers thinking.

Parish members helped them navigate the paperwork that comes with living in America.

Farhan learned a new country’s road rules, got his license and started driving for Uber and Lyft.

They’ve been trying to get the other branch of their family to Omaha ever since.

“We always had a dream that we would build ourselves with them,” Zak said. “Whatever we do for our family, we try to do it for them as well.”

The Loved Ones Left Behind

In December 2012, Ali went on what seemed like a usual Syria supply run. What happened next was pieced together by family and friends.

Two months before, Farhan and his family had left Syria. Ali stayed behind in Homs with his wife Faten and their children.

On this supply trip, he loaded his beloved truck with food for his family and neighbors and medicine for his aging parents.

But while he was out driving, a new group of soldiers descended on Homs.

His friends in town called him. Lay low, they said. Don’t try to reenter the city.

But his father’s Parkinson’s tremors were getting worse, and he needed his meds.

Ali got into his truck and started driving toward the city.

He was close to a checkpoint where he knew the guards – soldiers he’d given food and tea in exchange for safe passage and no questions asked.

But a new checkpoint had popped up, manned by soldiers Ali had never seen before.

Where are you going? they asked. We need your truck.

They unloaded everything for themselves.

OK, now go.

What about my truck? Ali asked.

Your truck is ours now.

He argued. A soldier bashed his head with a butt end of a rifle. Ali collapsed to the ground.

Later, a relative would report back to the family that he saw soldiers driving Ali’s truck. A family friend said they found Ali’s ID half burnt in the family’s old home. Next to it was a burned body.

The family isn’t sure if it was Ali or not. Sometimes the Syrian army would trick families into believing their loved ones are dead, when they were actually imprisoned elsewhere.

Farhan worked quickly to get his sister-in-law Faten and her six children, along with his parents and three sisters safely out of Syria. Months later, when the extended family lived together at a refugee camp in Jordan, she had her seventh.

Faten and her children have now been in Jordan for a dozen years, waiting, at first hopefully and now helplessly as eight tickets to Nebraska elude their grasp.

Their resettlement had been planned, paid for through a private sponsorship and covered by funds already raised by her relatives and St. Pius members who’d signed on as co-sponsors.

Since Trump’s executive order, the Abughalyoons have been searching for other ways to get their family to the U.S.

But a family preference visa has a waitlist longer than 10 years for distant relatives. The Trump administration has issued a sweeping ban on asylum at the southern border. 

In February, Rosie and Jennifer and an Omaha community group met with Rep. Don Bacon, requesting that he and other Republican leaders ask the president to reinstate refugee resettlement, or that he sponsor legislation to help refugees.

They scheduled a meeting to discuss the specifics of the Abughalions’ case. It was rescheduled due to snow.

“America needs to do its share when it comes to taking in refugees,” Bacon, who represents the Omaha area, said in a statement. “With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, starvation and civil war in Sudan, the nightmare of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and many more examples, there are many people seeking safety.”

On Feb. 25, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in a case challenging the new refugee ban. Whether it will have any impact is unclear. Days later, the Trump administration cut contracts for the agencies that run refugee resettlement, axing the infrastructure that’s helped resettle 3.6 million refugees in the U.S. since 1980. 

Sitting in their backyard in Papillion, the Abughalyoons wonder what comes next.

They think about the people who helped get them to Omaha. They think about the continued fight to try to bring over the loved ones left behind.

And the Omahans who helped them arrive here, to this suburban backyard a world away from war, think about how this Syrian family has shaped their lives.

“My kids grew up with these guys,” Jennifer said. “It has been as much good for us as it has been for them. And I wish more people would be willing to take on things like this. You get …”

Jennifer motions to the family she’s known for nine years now.

“… forever. Forever and ever.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/split-apart-new-ban-leaves-family-half-in...