Mo­hamed Iye wore a bril­liant smile Sun­day af­ter­noon at Min­neapo­lis-St. Paul In­ter­na­tional Air­port. In min­utes, he would greet his wife and two young daugh­ters. He had not seen them in more than two years.

Iye, 66, a So­mali-born U.S. cit­i­zen who lives in Maple­wood, waited for his fam­ily for an hour af­ter see­ing that the flight from Am­s­ter­dam had ar­rived at 12:26 p.m.

Then the gate slid open and his wife, Saido Ahmed Ab­dille, and their daugh­ters Nimo, 4, and Nafiso, 2, were in view. Iye swept up his old­est daugh­ter in a hug first. Then the youngest, too, was in his arms.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s travel ban threw Ab­dille’s travel plans into un­cer­tainty. Ab­dille was still in Nairobi last week when she was told she would­n’t be able to travel to Am­s­ter­dam and then to Min­nesota. When a fed­eral judge on Fri­day tem­porar­ily blocked the or­der and fed­eral au­thor­i­ties be­gan re­vers­ing the visa can­cel­la­tions, she was told her flights had been ap­proved.

“I’ve been feel­ing a lot of worry that I would not make it here,” Ab­dille said, adding that she had no prob­lem get­ting through im­mi­gra­tion and cus­toms.

“This is the first part of hap­pi­ness,” Iye said through an in­ter­preter, Khalid Barkha­dle.
Trump re­sponded an­grily to the Fri­day rul­ing, or­der­ing an ap­peal. But on Sun­day morn­ing, a fed­eral ap­peals court re­jected a re­quest by the Jus­tice De­part­ment to re­store Trump’s tar­geted travel ban im­me­di­ately.

Fi­nally on U.S. soil, Ab­dille and the girls ap­peared ex­hausted by their travel and over­whelmed by the crowd at the air­port. The ar­rivals area was jammed and chaotic as many fam­i­lies were there wait­ing for in­ter­na­tional ex­change stu­dents from around the world.

Iye said the fam­ily just wants to spend time to­gether. “We’re go­ing to con­sult with doc­tors and go for­ward,” he said.

The cou­ple’s chil­dren are U.S. cit­i­zens; Ab­dille is not and had waited through more than four years of vet­ting to be ap­proved to come to the United States, Iye and his at­tor­neys said. The chil­dren had stayed with their mother in Kenya, but med­ical treat­ment for their old­est, who has mi­cro­cephaly, was not avail­able there.

An­other im­mi­grant fam­ily was re­united at the air­port just min­utes af­ter Iye and Ab­dille bun­dled their chil­dren against the cold and left sur­rounded by friends and fam­ily mem­bers.

Farhan Diriye had waited 12 years in a Kenyan refugee camp to come to the United States, he said. His mother, brother and sis­ters im­mi­grated in 2004 but he was de­layed for rea­sons that were not clear Sun­day.

“Yes, we still be­lieve in Amer­ica,” he and his fam­ily said.

CAIR-Min­nesota and other im­mi­grant ad­vo­cates re­it­er­ated Sun­day that they are en­cour­ag­ing trav­el­ers from af­fected coun­tries to fly as soon as pos­si­ble be­cause of un­cer­tainty sur­round­ing the stay.

Min­nesota on Wednes­day joined a suit by the Wash­ing­ton state at­tor­ney gen­eral that chal­lenged Trump’s ex­ec­u­tive or­der as un­con­sti­tu­tional.

On Fri­day, a group that in­cludes sev­eral law firms, the Im­mi­grant Law Cen­ter of Min­nesota and Ad­vo­cates for Hu­man Rights sued to block the White House travel ban on be­half of Iye and an­other Min­nesota fam­ily.

In both sit­u­a­tions, the hus­bands are res­i­dents of the United States and their wives had passed all back­ground checks, sub­mit­ted all nec­es­sary doc­u­ments, com­pleted all nec­es­sary in­ter­views and been ap­proved for im­mi­grant visas, mak­ing them el­i­gi­ble for green cards upon en­ter­ing the U.S., said a state­ment from those who filed the law­suit.

Ab­dille “has been through four years of very vig­or­ous screen­ing,” said Ab­d­i­nasir Ab­du­lahi, one of her at­tor­neys. “If four years of vet­ting is not ex­treme, I don’t know what is.”

One of the two cases in­volves Farshid M. Zadeh, a le­gal U.S. res­i­dent, and his wife, Samaneh Raghimi, who had quit her job as a pro­fes­sor at Azad Uni­ver­sity in Iran to move to the United States to be with her hus­band. They were on a flight from Tehran, Iran, when the ex­ec­u­tive or­der was signed. When the cou­ple landed in Am­s­ter­dam, Nether­lands, Raghimi was no­ti­fied that she would not be al­lowed to fly to the United States. Fi­nan­cial con­sid­er­a­tions forced Zadeh to re­turn to Min­nesota, and his wife to Tehran.

Raghimi was sched­uled to fly from Tehran to Am­s­ter­dam on Sun­day night and to ar­rive in Min­neapo­lis on Mon­day af­ter­noon, said the fam­i­ly’s at­tor­ney, Kevin Ri­ach.

“Things are so fluid right now, I’d say we’re hope­ful rather than say­ing we’re con­fi­dent” about her ar­rival, he said.