MORRISVILLE, N.C. (RNS) — Seven months after his flight to the United States was abruptly canceled, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to overturn President Trump’s freeze on the U.S. refugee program arrived at Raleigh-Durham International Airport Thursday (July 10), with his wife and 1-year-old son in tow.
Known in the legal filings by the alias Pacito to protect him from retaliation, the 22-year-old Congolese refugee was greeted by two lawyers for the International Refugee Assistance Project as well as several representatives of refugee resettlement agencies, who came with welcome signs, balloons, flowers and a teddy bear. A few friends from the Democratic Republic of the Congo living in the area also came to welcome him.
Over the past year, Pacito and his wife underwent multiple interviews, medical exams and security screenings ahead of their planned departure to the U.S. on Jan. 22. They had sold all their belongings, given up their rental home and arrived at a transit center in Nairobi on Jan. 21, only to be told that their overnight flight to the U.S. was canceled.
Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order freezing refugee admissions was supposed to go into effect on Jan. 27, but according to the case, Pacito v Trump, the U.S. State Department began canceling refugee flights preemptively.
Instead of flyin …