Opinion

Breaking Traditional Ground

Vivian Khalaf ’91 and Omar Abuzir ’99 have taken a lot of trips to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport over the past several years. Not to get on a plane. Not to give someone a ride. But just to talk to people who technically, under United States immigration laws, weren’t on U.S. soil since they had not yet been “admitted”: people halted by President Donald Trump’s executive order blocking immigration from a slew of Muslim-majority countries.

When practicing immigration law, there were always hurdles. But there were hurdles, and then there were hurdles. “People who were not allowed entry were also not allowed legal representation. Because they technically weren’t lawfully on U.S. soil, they had no rights....Things aren’t as easy as they used to be, not that they ever were,” Khalaf says.