Iranian Baby Barred By Muslim Ban Now Heading To US For Heart Surgery

I gotta tell you, this one hits me in all the feels. Little Fatemeh Reshad actually bears a very strong resemblance to my eldest daughter as a baby. And I can't imagine the anguish of her parents at having this beautiful, precious little girl slowly dying without a much needed heart surgery.

Six years ago, my nephew was "born blue" due to structural abnormalities of his heart. Within two weeks of life, he had three major surgeries and a long recovery in NICU. There were three babies in the hospital at that time for similar surgeries. My nephew is the only one who survived. There is nothing more heartrending than being in the powerless position of hoping beyond hope that medical science can help your baby.

But Trump's ill-conceived and poorly rolled-out Muslim ban stopped Fatemeh's parents cold, as they were supposed to travel that very day to the US to get her the heart surgery she needed for structural abnormalities and two holes in her heart. Can you begin to imagine how awful that must have been for them?

“Everything was OK. They asked for a lot of paperwork. She got the appointment, February 5, in the morning,” Fatemah’s uncle, Sam Taghizadeh, told KPTV. “All the papers, everything was ready, and just in the last minute they canceled everything.”

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