UPDATE: Feb. 1 ― Fox 2, the Fox affiliate in Detroit, on Wednesday updated the article posted to its website concerning Mike Hager and his family to say that it is doing additional reporting into the “validity” of the report.
The Huffington Post has reached out to the station and attempted to reach Hager for additional information.
Previously:
A Michigan man blames the death of his 75-year-old mother on President Donald Trump after she was forced to stay in Iraq during the implementation of his controversial immigration ban.
Mike Hager, a U.S. citizen who is from Iraq, told the Detroit television affiliate Fox 2 that he had gone to Iraq to bring his mother, Naimma, back to the United States for medical treatment after she fell ill while visiting there. His mother, a permanent U.S. resident, had lived in America since 1995. But when Hager got to the airport in Iraq, she was turned away, and so were two of his nephews and a niece, because of Trump’s executive order. She died the following day.
“She knew right there if we sent her back to the hospital, she’s going to pass away, she’s not going to make it,” the Detroit resident said in the interview. “They destroyed us. I went with my family; I came back by myself. They destroyed our family.”
In an interview with CBS in Boston, Hager, who worked in Iraq as a translator for U.S. Special Forces, said the decision “came out of nowhere.”
“We put our lives on the line. I got shot twice in Iraq in Fallujah. And I sacrificed, give all my life to this country. Now I’m coming over here with my family not with me,” he said.
Hager blames his mother’s death on Trump and his decision to temporarily ban the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering America. The ban initially included green card holders.
Permanent residents who have been deemed safe have since been told they can enter the U.S., but many were snarled at airports around the country for days after the executive order was issued, including some people who were deported and others who were not allowed to board flights to the U.S. from the designated countries.
“I really believe this in my heart, if they would have let us in, my mom ― she would have made it and she would have been sitting right here next to me,” Hager told Fox 2. “She’s gone because of him.”
Source: Huffington Post