Trump ban puts cancer patient's family in limbo

MEMPHIS — A native of Iran, Arina Yaghoubi, has battled leukemia since she was 14.

While her disease was in remission, she left home to enter James Madison University in Virginia, only to have the disease return.

Yaghoubi, 21, has been successfully treated at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, with her mother by her side for the last nine months and is now cancer free.

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But with the ban President Trump has placed on immigrants from certain Middle Eastern countries, her mother is afraid to go home and her father can't enter the United States. With so much uncertainty, Yaghoubi is afraid that she might not be allowed to stay in this country to continue her studies.

Late Saturday, a federal judge in New York granted a stay on deportations of those detained on entry to the United States. But no one knows if the stay will hold, or how long it will last, so the uncertainty remains.

"I just don’t know what my status is going to be or where I’m going to end up. Is the United States going to be welcoming to me once more or politely ask me to leave?" she said. "I'm scared about my future."

Trump signed on Friday an executive order that banned visitors from seven Middle Eastern countries — Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Syria — from coming to the United States for 90 days. The executive order signed Friday also suspended for 120 days all refugees coming to the United States.

Yaghoubi's father has obtained a visa to come to this country, but won't be able to use it. And with the uncertainties of her health and the fluid U.S. immigration policy, Yaghoubi's mother is reluctant to go home.

"I could be fine for rest of my life. But, if something comes up, my parents just want to be able to be with me," Yaghoubi said. "They just want to make sure they have a backup plan. The backup plan was great but it's not really practical anymore."

St. Jude officials could not comment on Yaghoubi's particular situation, but in a statement said, "This is new so we are still working to understand its implications for our patients and families. It's not appropriate to speak about any particular patients at this point. But I can tell you that we are committed to helping our patients and their families as they experience life-threatening diseases. Our mission is to find cures and save children's lives, and we understand how critical families are in that process."

Yaghoubi is a freshman at James Madison and plans to become a pharmacist.

Her mother has been away from her job as an accounting manager at an electric company for nearly a year. She's also been away from her husband and Yaghoubi's 18-year-old brother.

Yaghoubi's father is a civil engineer and owns his company, making it easier for him to come to the United States if he's needed and if he's allowed in.

"I’m just scared and really frustrated," she said.

The doctors at St. Jude have been wonderful, she said, but treating leukemia is hard.

She had her first bone-marrow transplant in 2010.

"The disease knocks you down and the medication knocks you down all over again," she said. "You can't even walk. You can't even breathe the way you want to."

Because the disease kept her away from school, Yaghoubi can't wait to get back to James Madison.

But her student visa was converted to a medical visa and there's no guarantee, in this current political climate, if she can get her student visa back.

"With all the things I’m seeing right now, I just don't know if it's a possibility for me anymore," she said. "I don’t know if I’m going to be allowed to stay in the United States. I'm just not sure about it at all."

Follow Linda Moore on Twitter: @LindaAnita