By Pat Pheifer

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Mohamed Iye wore a brilliant smile Sunday afternoon at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. In minutes, he would greet his wife and two young daughters. He had not seen them in more than two years.

Iye, 66, a Somali-born U.S. citizen who lives in Maplewood, waited for his family for an hour after seeing that the flight from Amsterdam had arrived at 12:26 p.m.

Then the gate slid open and his wife, Saido Ahmed Abdille, and their daughters Nimo, 4, and Nafiso, 2, were in view. Iye swept up his oldest daughter in a hug first. Then the youngest, too, was in his arms.

President Donald Trump’s travel ban threw Abdille’s travel plans into uncertainty. Abdille was still in Nairobi last week when she was told she wouldn’t be able to travel to Amsterdam and then to Minnesota. When a federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the order and federal authorities began reversing the visa cancellations, she was told her flights had been approved.

“I’ve been feeling a lot of worry that I would not make it here,” Abdille said, adding that she had no problem getting through immigration and customs.

“This is the first part of happiness,” Iye said through an interpreter, Khalid Barkhadle.

Trump responded angrily to the Friday ruling, ordering an appeal. But on Sunday morning, a federal appeals court rejected a request by the Justice Department to restore Trump’s targeted travel ban immediately.

Finally on U.S. soil, Abdille and the girls appeared exhausted by their travel and overwhelmed by the crowd at the airport. The arrivals area was jammed and chaotic as many families were there waiting for international exchange students from around the world.

Iye said the family just wants to spend time together. “We’re going to consult with doctors and go forward,” he said.

The couple’s children are U.S. citizens; Abdille is not and had waited through more than four years of vetting to be approved to come to the United States, Iye and his attorneys said. The children had stayed with their mother in Kenya, but medical treatment for their oldest, who has microcephaly, was not available there.

Another immigrant family was reunited at the airport just minutes after Iye and Abdille bundled their children against the cold and left surrounded by friends and family members.

Farhan Diriye had waited 12 years in a Kenyan refugee camp to come to the United States, he said. His mother, brother and sisters immigrated in 2004 but he was delayed for reasons that were not clear Sunday.

“Yes, we still believe in America,” he and his family said.