Three years of waiting: Trump travel ban bureaucracy keeps Iranian couple apart
Advocacy groups point to a waiver process covered in red tape that leaves thousands, like Yazdanesta and her husband, in legal limbo
Every morning, Hedieh Yazdanseta gets up by 5am and pulls up the US state department’s website on her phone, tapping in a case number made up of 13 digits and letters she has long memorized.
She holds her breath as the page slowly loads, but disappointment quickly settles in when she sees her case is still in “administrative processing”. For the past two years, those words have kept Yazdanseta and her husband, Mohsen Rahmani, thousands of miles apart and unable to start the life they want to live together.