South Sudanese immigrants were already grappling with a blanket visa revocation and worries about their TPS status. Then Trump banned all travel from neighboring Sudan.
Over the phone, across an ocean, Angok Gai tries to help his wife raise their two daughters.
Gai, a U.S. citizen, lives and works in the Twin Cities. His wife and daughters are in Uganda, where they moved from South Sudan so the girls could attend school.
“South Sudan is not secure, that’s why I moved them to Uganda. They are living in Uganda now because I need my kids to go to school,” Gai said.
He applied for visas for his wife and daughters in 2024 and had been waiting for months for their applications to move forward. But in April, the State Department announced that all new visa issuances from South Sudan would stop and visas held by South Sudanese passport holders would be revoked.