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.
The move created a chill in the South Sudanese community in Minnesota and elsewhere. At the time, many were waiting to learn if their Temporary Protected Status would extend beyond May 3.
Since then, the Trump administration has also issued a travel ban covering 12 countries, including neighboring Sudan, which is in the midst of a two-year civil war.
And it has tried to deport immigrants from countries including Cuba and Vietnam to South Sudan, which is facing its own ongoing conflict.