Metro Atlanta families kept apart by Trump’s refugee suspension

Yusuf was wearing a black hoodie, sitting on a bench outside a coffee truck in Clarkston. He’s young, soft-spoken, his voice barely above a whisper, and his eyes look tired. He took some time out from working as an Uber driver to speak with 285 South over the weekend. 

Yusuf is from Afghanistan and now lives in Clarkston. He moved to the U.S. around four years ago, but his wife and two small children, ages four and six, are still back in Afghanistan, despite his efforts to bring them to join him. 

Now, with the Trump Administration pause on all refugee admissions for the next 90 days at least, he’s at a loss of what to do. 

Yusuf was in the military in Afghanistan, following in the footsteps of his father. He was on the path to becoming an airforce pilot, and was in Slovakia in 2020 for flight training when the Taliban took over his country. 

He was evacuated to the United States. The embassy there, he said, reassured him that his family would join him in the U.S. too. “They speak with us. We help you to bring your family, they took the information and everything.” But, he said, nothing happened. “We didn’t receive anything about that.” (He asked for his real name not to be used because he’s worried it would impact his family’s case).

Over a year after he arrived in metro Atlanta, he received approval for his asylum case. Shortly after, with the help of the International Rescue Committee, he applied for his family to join him—through an I-730 Refugee/Asylee family petition. This past fall, they were approved by USCIS to come to the U.S. He thought they’d go to Pakistan for their visa interviews at the National Visa Center, and be here with him in Atlanta shortly after. 

But last week, Yusuf was scrolling on social media when he read the news.

“I saw it on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok”—he can’t remember which platform. Signed on his first day in office, President Trump’s executive order effectively halted the cases of thousands of Afghans seeking to resettle in the United States, as well as 10,000 others from around the world who’d already been approved by the U.S. government. 

Yusuf called his wife. “She was angry with me,” he said. “I told her I can’t do nothing. It’s not my fault.” He tried to reassure her, telling her, “Just we can wait, [and see] what will happen next. And she was waiting. She don’t have nothing to do.”

Ikhlas Mohammed is in a similar situation. She last saw her husband three years ago. They’d fallen in love in their native Sudan, and had become engaged by the time Ikhlas came to the United States in 2018. The war in Sudan made a wedding there impossible; after marrying online in an Islamic ceremony, they met in Dubai in 2022 to be married in person—with the expectation that, with Ikhlas having been approved for asylum here, her new husband would be able to join her.

In 2023, while he waited in Ethiopia, USCIS granted him approval to come to the U.S.—but, as with Yusuf’s family, he’s spent the intervening time waiting for a visa. He had an interview with the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia in October 2024, Ikhlas says: “They told him, You are approved for the visa, and you can come and get your visa within two weeks, we will email you with all the information. And it has been three months, now, almost four months, and we didn’t hear back from the embassy.”

Now, with the refugee pause, she’s distraught. “The situation is just horrible,” Ikhlas told 285 South. Her husband is “feeling terrible.” The uncertainty is “impacting all of us. Mentally, physically, financially.” Her daughter, two-year-old Rita, has never met her father. From their home in Lithonia, they’ve FaceTimed with him a lot, but it’s not quite the same: “She didn’t build that connection and bond with him, just through the phone calls and FaceTime. Both of them are missing a lot.”

“It’s not only me,” she told 285 South. “A lot of refugees and immigrants are now in the middle of, like, chaos.”

“It’s not only me. A lot of refugees and immigrants are now in the middle of, like, chaos.” Ikhlas Mohammed, Lithonia resident, originally from Sudan

In his first week back in office, Trump also cut off federal funding for refugees currently in the U.S.—freezing money to local agencies that administer the resettlement program. Those funds “are critical for providing essential services, including emergency housing, food assistance, and the support that helps newly arrived refugees and immigrants achieve self-sufficiency,” read a statement from the Coalition of Refugee Service Agencies (CRSA), a group of local resettlement agencies and advocates in Georgia. 

In Clarkston, Yusuf talks to his family in Afghanistan, via WhatsApp video call, at least once a day. His daughter, who’s in first grade, can’t wait to join her father in the U.S. When she asks him when she’ll see him, though, “I promise [her] maybe it will take two months, three months,” he said. But it’s been four years.

“When I talk with her, she is always ready to come here.” When she goes to school, Yusuf said,  she tells her classmates and teachers that she may not be at school the next day. “I will go tomorrow to America,” she says.