These Refugee Grandparents Were Finally Allowed To Flee Ukraine — Then Trump’s Order Stopped Them

Larisa and George Gabliya

By Talal Ansari

Yuri Karpenko expected his wife’s parents to arrive in Seattle from eastern Ukraine in two weeks’ time.

Instead, on Monday, he got a phone call telling him that George and Larisa Gabliya, granted refugee status by the US in November 2016, would not be coming. They, like an estimated 20,000 others, had been blocked from entering the country by President Donald Trump’s executive order halting the refugee program for 120 days.

“It’s awful, especially because they are older parents, they are not young anymore,” Karpenko told BuzzFeed News. “They want some kind of security in their life, and right now they don’t have any security, or even a place to live.”

Karpenko said his father and mother-in-law were granted admission into the US as refugees in November 2016, fleeing religious persecution and the conflict in Ukraine.

They began to prepare, and as required by Ukrainian law, they gave up their Ukrainian identification — and were left with their passport — resigned from their jobs, and sold their apartment before their anticipated departure (their passport only allows for international travel, which they do not have the ability to do, for visa and financial reasons). They are now stuck in Kharkiv, Ukraine. They’re jobless, without a place to live, and without the ability to travel outside of the country. They will be without these safeguards for at least the next four months until — and if — the ban is lifted.

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Source: Buzzfeed