A visa interview 15 years in the making ended in heartbreak, hours after a new U.S. policy and Iranian travel ban shut the door.
FLOWER MOUND, Texas — A North Texas woman says a long-awaited family reunion on American soil was derailed this month after her brother and niece were denied entry to the U.S. under a new travel ban affecting Iranian nationals.
Nika Reinecke holds on tightly to a single photo taken in 1978. In it are her mother, her sister, her older brother, and her younger brother, Alireza Zolghadri. It’s the last and only photo of the entire family together.
“It’s been almost 50 years since we’ve been together as a family,” Reinecke said. “They mean the world to me.”
After fleeing Iran before the revolution in the late 1970s, Reinecke eventually became a U.S. citizen and settled in Texas. She said her entire family eventually gained citizenship—except for Alireza, who remained behind in Iran once the U.S. Embassy there closed following a widely covered hostage crisis.
“He is the only one who was left behind in Iran,” she said. “We mean a lot to each other because we only have each other.”
In 2010, Reinecke said her brother and his daughter started the process to immigrate to the United States. After 15 years of waiting, she said, their case was finally called this month. They traveled to the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi for their visa interview, but were told they were no longer eligible to migrate.
“Their denial is because there’s an executive order in place,” she said. Reinecke told WFAA that she and her brother were told the following: “In accordance with the executive order that went into effect at midnight Eastern Time today, you are not eligible to migrate. And that was it,” Reinecke recalled.
She said her brother, now 60, and his daughter remain in limbo, caught between a newly issued U.S. travel ban targeting Iran and rising tensions in the Middle East between Iran and Israel, which has led to both entities firing barrages of missiles toward each other.
“The conflict between Iran and Israel—the situation is more dire,” Reinecke said. “They are caught in the middle. They just have to go with whatever their governments dictate to them.”
Reinecke said that while they followed the legal immigration process for 15 years, the outcome was still devastating.
“It went all the way according to the plan,” she said. “You cannot imagine the mass of documents that you have to provide for a legal immigration.”
Reinecke and her older brother came to the U.S. before the revolution for school and were able to obtain a visa for their mother and younger sister years later. Because military service is generally mandatory for all males between the ages of 18 and 49, her younger brother Zolghadri wouldn’t have been eligible to even apply for a visa until 2010 because he never volunteered or served.
She said her niece’s situation is especially concerning.
“She’s going to be the most impacted because she’s a young woman in Iran,” Reinecke said. “There are very few opportunities for a young woman in Iran. If she goes past the age of 21, she will not be eligible to immigrate with him, and her path to a visa becomes more difficult.”
Reinecke said she has written letters to U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging them to consider an exception for her family’s case.
“My appeal to Secretary Rubio, to President Trump, to anyone who’s listening, is to please don’t punish the people because of their government’s acts,” she said.
After building a life in Texas and marrying an airline pilot, Reinecke said she hoped this summer would be the moment her entire family could finally stand together again—this time for a second photo.
“We were thinking July would be the time frame that we all can be together,” she said. “We have a room ready for them. My mother is 80 and we don’t know how much time she has left.”
Now, she says, that moment is uncertain once again.
