Congressional hearing on travel ban highlights muddled waiver process

Ismail Alghazali has never met his five-month-old daughter.

“I live in darkness, and my family is my only light,” said Alghazali, a Yemeni American who works at a Brooklyn bodega and has not seen his wife and two young children in more than a year.

Alghazali is a US citizen and his wife has a heart condition that requires medical care, but the family has been separated as a result of the Trump administration’s travel ban. It only took a five-minute meeting with a consular officer for her visa from Yemen to be denied, he said.