Syrians are heartbroken over Trump's plan to ban refugees from the U.S.

“We had so much hope. That was our chance to survive,” a Syrian mother from Damascus who had received permission to be resettled in America with her family and was expecting to move this year, told BuzzFeed News. “We bound our lives to this chance, and suddenly all doors shut in front of our eyes, and we don’t know the alternative.”

The woman said her family had turned down a recent offer of citizenship in Turkey because they had their sights set on America. “America was a country of freedom for us,” she added. “I chose America to forget the racism that they treated us with here in Turkey, but it seems to me that we were [trying to go] to a country led by a racist.”
A second mother, Raeda, said she and her six children, after waiting three years for resettlement, had recently completed the final bureaucratic steps and had been waiting to receive their plane tickets to the US. Raeda’s husband was imprisoned by ISIS in 2013 for refusing to join them and hasn’t been heard from since. “I’m worried for my children here after losing the hope of moving to America,” she said. “We had heard that Americans always stand beside the oppressed, regardless of their religion or their ethnicity.”