"Who has the right to feel safe and who doesn't?": Inside the first night of Trump's travel ban

Nisrin Elamin Abdelrahman was in Sudan when she got wind of President Trump's imminent executive order, banning entry to the U.S. of citizens from Sudan and six other Muslim-majority nations.

Nisrin was in Sudan doing field research for her PhD in anthropology at Stanford University in California. She had been living in the U.S. for 24 years, was a permanent resident, and had a green card. But the executive order had her worried. She had been born and raised in Germany, and had studied in the U.S., but she was a Sudanese citizen.

Not wanting to take any chances, Nisrin decided to fly back to the U.S. before the order could be signed. However, on her way home, she missed a connecting flight in London, delaying her journey by a crucial three hours.

While waiting for the next available flight to the U.S., Nisrin saw a post on Facebook saying that President Trump had signed the executive order banning entry to the U.S., for 90 days, by citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan.

By the time she got on her final flight, Nisrin hadn't slept in 48 hours. She was tired, but she was also extremely nervous.

She arrived at New York's JFK airport at around 10 pm. When she handed the official her green card, she was asked for her passport. And so began her ordeal.

Nisrin was taken to a holding area and questioned extensively.

Where was she coming from? What was she doing? Which educational institutions had she attended? What languages did she speak? What countries had she visited, not just recently, but over the course of her entire life?

Then the questioning changed. What was the political situation in Sudan? Did she know about radical groups there? Did she know any people with radical views?

And then they asked her for her social media handles.  

By one or two in the morning, the airport terminal was closing. They wanted to transfer Nisrin to a 24-hour terminal. She was subjected to a full body pat-down, then handcuffed. Nisrin started to cry.

Eventually the handcuffs came off. Nisrin was transferred by van to the other terminal, where she joined some other detainees from Iran and Iraq.

"I felt like in that room we were really treated more like criminals than in the previous holding area," says Nisrin. "And it was like we couldn't sit next to each other, we couldn't talk to each other. None of us brought food and we had been in there for a couple of hours. At some point I asked if I could eat my sandwich and they said yes, but it had to be like in plain sight."

At around 3 am, she was finally called up. And as suddenly as she had been detained, she was freed. At first Nisrin was simply happy it was over — she grabbed her passport and ran out.

But in time, as she played through the events of those few hours in her mind, she came to some hard realizations.

"It just makes me angry because I just feel like it's dehumanizing to be told, what you went through needs to happen to keep our country safe. Who has the right to feel safe and who doesn't?" asks Nisrin.

Music in the documentary is by Johnny Ripper.

 About the producers

Nisrin's story was produced by the Stanford Storytelling Project, an arts program at Stanford University that seeks to help students identify and share the stories that surround them. The students involved in producing Nisrin's story were Helvia Taina, An-Li Herring and Eileen Williams.

The managing editor of the Stanford Storytelling Project's podcast series, State of the Human, is Jake Warga, who also teaches courses in podcast production at Stanford. Jake Warga has been an independent radio producer for over a decade and has reported from far-flung places, producing award-winning radio documentaries for such shows as NPR's All Things Considered, PRI's The World, Studio360, This American Life and many more.

His interests have always been in telling good stories and teaching how good stories are told.