Yemenis close NYC shops in protest of Trump travel ban

Trump’s executive order barred people from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Under the order, travellers have been detained, sent back from the United States or stranded in other countries.

Zaid Nagi, who owns three delis in the Bronx, said the ban disrupted plans to bring his mother to the United States, where he has lived for more than 20 years. The 36-year-old married father of four said the point of the protest was to say, “We are part of this community. We are not who this order is trying to say we are.”

He said most of his customers had expressed solidarity with the shutdown.

“They know who we are. They know we are human beings just like them,” he said. “I believe in the good people of America.”

As night fell, a raucous but orderly crowd of at least 1,000 people including many of the shopkeepers filled a plaza in Brooklyn to protest the travel ban.

Many waved the flag of Yemen. Their cheers echoed between tall buildings to the federal courthouse a few blocks away where lawyers for the government and civil liberties groups appeared earlier before a judge hearing a legal challenge to Trump’s travel restrictions.

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Follow Deepti Hajela at www.twitter.com/dhajela. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/deepti-hajela. Follow Verena Dobnik at www.twitter.com/verenachirps and read more of her work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/verena-dobnik.

Deepti Hajela And Verena Dobnik, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Yemenis close NYC shops in protest of Trump travel ban

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