Visa spat, travel ban add new uncertainty for Minnesota’s Sudanese community

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.

Minnesota is home to more than 3,500 people with Sudanese ancestry, according to the most recent Census Bureau data. Sudanese refugees began arriving in Minnesota in the early 1990s, and have built communities in Mankato, Rochester, Austin and Fargo-Moorhead, among other areas.

Matuor Alier, head of the Fargo-based Community Connect Center, said he began hearing about the visa issues for South Sudanese families earlier this year.

Alier said he knows at least four dozen people in the Fargo-Moorhead area who have been notified that their visas were revoked. His nonprofit saw a spike in calls this spring from people seeking a referral to an immigration lawyer.

The CCC has launched “Know Your Rights” training where members of the South Sudanese community and other immigrants learn what to do if they encounter agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Fowzia Adde, executive director of the Immigrant Development Center in Moorhead, said her group works with many in the Sudanese community, providing peer-to-peer mental health support and refugee services.

Adde said she’s currently working with a South Sudanese refugee whose application to bring her husband to Minnesota to reunite with her and their children has stalled.

“He was not called for a visa interview in Nairobi. So the family was worried. This [visa revocations] will slow down family reunions,” Adde said.

Julia Decker, policy director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, says the broad nature of the visa revocations for South Sudanese nationals means that a large swath of people could be impacted.

“It’s literally an alphabet A through Z of visas that exist for people to come over to the United States in any and all types of statuses. It’s students, it’s workers, it’s diplomats, it’s athletes. A revocation of all types of visas is very, very broad,” Decker said.

When someone receives a notice of intent to have their visa revoked, initially they may wonder what options are available to them to defend against their removal. Seeking legal counsel is one of the primary next steps someone in this situation could consider, Decker said.

“There are many, many different types of visas out there, and so what happens next will depend on the type of visa that that person has,” she said. “There are many variables, the only solid thing is to say talk to an immigration lawyer and steps from there become very, very fact-dependent.”

The threat of visa revocations and halt in new applications comes as many worry South Sudan is on the brink of a civil war spurred by warring political factions. The last civil war began in 2013, two years after South Sudan became the newest country in the world following its separation from Sudan, and ended in 2020.

A pastor in the South Sudanese community who requested anonymity because of the uncertainty around the Trump administration’s visa revocation announcement, said the local South Sudanese diaspora is trying to understand what the impact of this change will be.

“We are eagerly and anxiously trying to understand it and [wrap] our heads around it and try to be vigilant. If in any case it is affecting anybody [notice of visa revocation] then we have to see what can be done,” the pastor said.

Gai talks to his family on his days off work to connect and also coordinate the money he will send over for rent, food and the children’s school fees. One of his biggest worries after the visa freeze is the toll of his absence on his children’s lives.

“I am out of my family life, my kids’ lives,” Gai said. “I need my kids to be close to me.”

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This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.