Social media shook with emotion. Headlines shouted the news. Legal scholars debated the order’s scope. But the most immediate effect of President Trump’s executive order barring refugees from entering the United States and halting entry from seven predominantly Muslim countries could be quantified on a human scale: refugees and other immigrants from those seven countries, some on their way to the United States on Friday when Mr. Trump signed the order, who were no longer able to enter the United States.
Hearing of Mr. Trump’s plan to slam the door on Muslim immigrants this week, Mr. Shareef hurried his wife and three children onto a plane in the Iraqi city of Erbil in the early hours of Saturday. They had been cleared to resettle in Nashville — a new life that Mr. Shareef considered a great opportunity. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Shareef worked as a translator with American officials, and he received death threats. But after the Shareefs arrived in Cairo on Saturday, a check-in official spoke to Mr. Shareef.
Speaking by phone from an airport lounge, Mr. Shareef said he had sold the family home and car. His wife had given up her job. His two daughters, 10 and 17, had quit school. He had spent $5,000 on flights.
“Donald Trump ruined my life,” he said.
Ms. Omer, 39, is a green card holder, has lived in the United States since 1993, and graduated from Harvard University. On Friday night Ms. Omer was detained at Kennedy International Airport as she returned from Sudan, where she is a citizen, after a research trip for her anthropology Ph.D. at Stanford University.
Ms. Omer said customs officials were apologetic and appeared confused about what they were supposed to do with the detained travelers. “I have to do this,” one told her. For five hours they asked about her travels, her academic research and her views on Sudanese politics, which they admitted to knowing little about.
At one point, she said, they aggressively patted her down and handcuffed her. They removed the restraints when she began to cry, but the detainees brought in for questioning after her arrived in handcuffs, she said.
After Ms. Omer was released she said she felt like one of the lucky ones.
Hazhir Rahmandad, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, said his parents who hold green cards and split their time between the United States and Iran, were due back in Massachusetts on Tuesday to celebrate the birthday of Mr. Rahmandad’s twin children. Now they will not travel.
Professor Rahmandad set up a Google form for people from countries affected by the immigration order to report and share their experiences attempting to travel to the U.S. “I was so concerned,” he said. By Saturday evening, his spreadsheet had over 200 entries, most of them concerning people from Iran.
Mr. Abdi, 30, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Yale with permanent residency in the United States, said he left the United States on Jan. 22 for Afghanistan, where he planned to do field research for much of the next year. He had participated in the women’s march in Washington the day before. Now, he said he was in legal limbo as he awaited a visa from the consulate of Afghanistan, unable to return to the United States even with a green card and fearful of returning to Iran because of his activism about human rights issues there.
Speaking by phone from Dubai, Mr. Abdi said his current visa limits his stay in the United Arab Emirates to about a month. The possibility that green card holders and refugees could be barred from the United States did not occur to him when he left, he said.
Nada, a Yazidi woman from Iraq, was on her way to be reunited with her husband, Khalas, who lives in Washington. The two of them, their last names not released, were granted special immigrant visas to the United States as part of a program created to help thousands of Iraqis with ties to the United States, according to The New Yorker. Khalas, a former interpreter for the United States Army, was granted his visa in April. Nada’s visa was approved about a week ago, and her passport on Thursday.
Ms. Assali, 25, a third-year medical student from Allentown, Pa., said six of her Syrian relatives had arrived in Philadelphia on a flight from Doha, Qatar, on Saturday morning, only to be detained and put on a flight back less than three hours later. The group had obtained family-based immigrant visas.
Mr. Darweesh, a husband and father of three who worked for the United States military in Iraq for about a decade, was detained after arriving at Kennedy Airport on Friday night. He was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20. When he filed for it, he said he had been directly targeted because of his work for the United States as an interpreter, engineer and contractor.
Mr. Darweesh was released on Saturday after lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal court seeking freedom for him, as well as for another Iraqi detained at the airport.
Ms. Tayari, a resident of the United Kingdom who holds an Iranian passport, was unable to get back to Glasgow, where she works as a veterinarian, from Costa Rica, where she was vacationing, because her flight traveled through New York, according to The Guardian. Ms. Tayari grew up in Italy and told the newspaper that she had never experienced anything like it. She said it might cost her a month’s salary to book a new flight home.
The family members have been living in a refugee camp in Turkey, and were scheduled to fly to the United States on Monday, according to US Together, a refugee resettlement agency quoted in The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. The agency had found an apartment for them to rent with another family of Syrian refugees in Cleveland.
Those plans have been canceled after Mr. Trump’s order.
Mr. Saravi, a young scientist in Iran, had been scheduled to travel to Boston, where he had been awarded a fellowship at Harvard to study cardiovascular medicine, according to Thomas Michel, the professor who was to supervise his research. Then the visas for Mr. Saravi and his wife were suspended, Professor Michel said.
Mr. Alshawi, who worked for a United States contractor in Iraq, was detained after he landed at Kennedy Airport on Friday. He had flown from Stockholm to New York, en route to Texas to see his wife and son.
Jess Bidgood, Stephanie Saul and Declan Walsh contributed reporting.