Egyptian authorities barred six Arab migrants from leaving for the United States on Saturday, sources at Cairo airport said, hours after President Donald Trump suspended his country's refugee admissions programme.
Five Iraqis and a Yemeni national arrived at Cairo airport to board an Egyptair flight bound for the JF Kennedy Airport in New York, the sources added.
They had already obtained migration visas to enter the US.
‘When an official at the JF Kennedy Airport was notified of their status, he issued an order barring them from entering [the US],’ a source at Cairo airport said.
‘The passengers, who were escorted by a representative of the United Nations Refugee Agency, were informed of the ban and asked to check with the US embassies that had issued their visas,’ the source added on condition of anonymity.
On Friday, Trump suspended the US refugee admissions programme for four months.
He also banned the entry of Syrian refugees to the US indefinitely and halted the issuing of visas for citizens of six other mostly Muslim countries for three months.
These countries are reportedly Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Trump said that the measures were necessary to protect the US from ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’