The State Department gives Yazidi leader and Iraqi lawmaker Vian Dakhil an exemption from the Trump administration’s travel ban and she will be allowed to travel to the United States to receive a prize named for Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.
Dakhil, a member of the Iraqi parliament who has led the effort to raise awareness of the mass killings of her people at the hands of the Islamic State terrorist group, is slated to receive the prize February 8 in the US Capitol.
Her travel visa had been nullified by US President Donald Trump’s executive order signed last week placing a temporary travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq.
A federal judge in Seattle on Friday issued a temporary nationwide restraining order which immediately halted Trump’s immigration order and travel ban. Early on Sunday, a US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco denied a request by the US Department of Justice to restore the travel ban.
Lantos, who hailed from a Hungarian Jewish family and worked with Raoul Wallenberg during the Second World War, was a prominent advocate for human rights during his nearly three decades in Congress.
— JTA
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