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A translator of the US army in Iraq in 2008.

Andrea Comas / Reuters

An Iraqi man who risked his life working for US forces was among the first refugees and immigrants blocked at American airports on Friday night, as President Donald Trump's order halting arrivals from several Muslim nations came into effect.

The executive ordered signed earlier on Friday temporarily halted the US refugee program for 120 days; indefinitely suspended the intake of refugees from Syria; and blocked all people from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days.

The first legal challenge to Trump's action was filed on Saturday by two Iraqi men with US visas who were in the air when the president signed the executive order and were then turned away upon arrival.

The news of the lawsuit was first reported by the New York Times, which stated that two Iraqi refugees were being detained at New York's John F. Kennedy airport after they landed.

Lawyers for the men did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but International Refugee Assistance Project attorney Mark Doss told the Times, “We’ve never had an issue once one of our clients was at a port of entry in the United States. To see people being detained indefinitely in the country that’s supposed to welcome them is a total shock.”

One of the detained men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had worked as an interpreter for US forces in Iraq as a decade, having his life targeted twice for doing so, the Times reported.

The other man, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was coming to the US to join his child and wife, who had worked for an American contractor in Iraq, according to a copy of the complaint seen by Times.

Lawyers for the pair told that when they asked who they could call to find out more information, a Customs and Border Protection agent told them they would have to speak to the president.

In an interview with CNN on Saturday morning, Doss said he and other attorneys at JFK have still not been allowed to speak with their clients in person.

He said both of the men have been specifically targeted in their home country because of their affiliation with the US, and would be in “serious danger” if they were sent back.

“They're being persecuted,” he said. “They're coming to the United States with a valid status. These are individuals who are supposed to be in the United States to be protected because they were persecuted and now they're being detained unlawfully.”

The attorneys filed writs of habeas corpus in New York on Saturday morning seeking to get the men released. Court records also showed the lawyers filed a motion for class certification that, if granted, would represent all refugees and immigrants being detained or turned away under the new order.

Doss said it is unconstitutional to hold the men because they have “valid status” in the US.

“The argument is that it is unconstitutional to be holding these individuals in detention right now based on several different provisions of the constitution from the establishment clause, due process. It is illegal to be detaining them right now,” he said.

President Trump signing the executive order on Friday.

Susan Walsh / AP

News of the men's detention horrified Kirk W. Johnson, a former USAID worker in Iraq who founded The List Project, a non-profit which helps Iraqis get refugee status in the US because their lives are threatened in their home country for assisting American forces.

Johnson told BuzzFeed News via email that his staff has been up all night trying to figure out what will happen to Iraqi refugees either in route to the US or scheduled to be resettled imminently.

“Needless to say, this is an appalling and shameful day in our history,” he said.

He said he knows of one Iraqi woman who has waited for two years and gone through countless interviews to get her visa, which was just issued last week. She was denied entry into the US, he said.

“These human beings were vetted, exhaustively, before they were granted valid visas which are now being shredded with the stroke of the president's pen,” he said.

Johnson said it is hard for an average American to understand just how complex the vetting process is, even for Iraqis who have helped the US government for years and know American military members intimately.

He said he thinks these Iraqis are “arguably the most documented refugees on the face of the planet.”

“[They have] Marines and diplomats and aid workers vouching for them,” he said. “For the president of the United States to suggest that we don't know who's coming in, is either profoundly stupid, or cruel, because there are thousands of people who are running for their lives because they served alongside our troops during the war on terror.”

Trump Suspends Entire US Refugee Program For 120 Days, Syrians Indefinitely

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