Yemenis Close Bodegas and Rally to Protest Trump’s Ban
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Version 0 of 1. Thousands of Yemeni-Americans and their supporters rallied in Brooklyn on Thursday to denounce President Trump’s executive order on immigration, hours after hundreds of Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery stores around New York closed to protest the order. Waving American and Yemeni flags and holding signs in English and Arabic, the demonstrators filled the plaza at Borough Hall. They gathered for the Islamic sunset prayer and listened intently as a series of public officials greeted them with the words “Assalamu alaikum” and condemned the president’s order, which temporarily bars citizens of Yemen and six other majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. “This order goes against everything we came here for and everything America stands for,” said Abdul Salam Mubaraz, a bodega owner who had closed his shop for the day and spoke from the stage. For people fleeing war-torn countries like Yemen, he said, the restrictions amounted to “having the door of freedom shut by President Trump.” Yemeni-owned bodegas are institutions in many New York neighborhoods, selling coffee and bagels, groceries, umbrellas and many other items. Organizers said several hundred had closed from noon to 8 p.m. on Thursday in protest, which Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, told the crowd, sent “a loud and clear message to America.” Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed support for the protesters on Twitter. “New York City’s bodega owners are bravely shutting their doors to oppose the president’s shameful executive order,” Mr. de Blasio wrote. “I stand with them.” Many at the rally said they had been in this country for a long time. Khaled Abdel Salam, 41, immigrated to the United States in 1987 and works as a superintendent in a Manhattan apartment building. He said he was worried that the immigration restrictions were a sign of more trouble to come for Muslims in the United States. “We think this is the best country in the world,” he said. “We love America and we want to be able to keep living here.” Others were newer arrivals. Wissam Obaya, 21, moved to the United States two years ago to join his parents in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, where he works in a cousin’s bodega. The shop was among those that shut down, so he and his friends came to the rally, where they joked around and took selfies with their protest signs. Despite the convivial atmosphere, Mr. Obaya said he was concerned. “I’m upset because Trump doesn’t care about what’s best for Muslims,” he said. “This is a bad order. People lives are going to be hurt.” Nabil Ahmed Aljomai closed three Bronx stores that he owns as part of the strike. “We are trying to tell Mr. Trump that America is the greatest and we want to keep it the greatest in the American way, not in his way,” Mr. Aljomai said. “His decision is racist and he’s not supposed to make a decision like that.” Mr. Aljomai immigrated in 1992. He and his eight children are citizens, but he said he knew families whose members had different immigration statuses, raising the prospect of the ban dividing them. “Some people, they are citizens and they have two or three of their children who are citizens, but if they have one family member on a visa they can all get stuck outside,” he said. Many Yemeni visa-holders who were overseas when the executive order was issued are now unable to return, because the State Department revoked the visas of all nationals from the seven affected countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — even if they had lived in the United States for many years. “This is larger than the Yemeni community,” said Ibrahim Qatabi, 37, a legal assistant who planned to attend the rally. “We are impacted by the ban, but it should concern every American. Once they ban one group they can ban another group, and that’s how people’s rights get sent back to the Dark Ages.” Mr. Qatabi said that his great-grandfather had immigrated to the United States from Yemen early in the 20th century and that his grandfather had worked for Ford Motor Company. “How could people like us, who never engaged in violence or anything, be a threat?” he said. “We have been part of this country for a century.” Yemen has been racked by political instability for years. Its long-serving authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was forced to resign in 2012 during the Arab Spring, but the country soon descended into a civil war between rival groups backed by Iran and Saudi Arabia. The conflict led the United States to close its embassy in Sana, the capital, in 2015. Yemenis hoping to get to the United States have had to go to other countries, like Djibouti or Egypt, to apply for visas. Under President Barack Obama, some Yemenis had their United States passports confiscated at the embassy in Sana. Debbie Almontaser, president of the board of directors for the Muslim Community Network and an organizer of the protest, said many New Yorkers of Yemeni descent who had been working to bring relatives to the United States now had loved ones stranded in other countries overseas. She said the executive order had separated her brother-in-law from his wife and two children, who were in Jordan. “It is sad because now due to the Muslim ban there are many families that are unable to reunite,” she said. |