Two-year-old boy dies a week after Yemeni mother arrives

A boy has died at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland following public outcry when his Yemeni mother could not get a visa to see him, leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said tonight.

The hospitalization of 2-year-old Abdullah Hassan and the U.S. ban on travel from some mostly Muslim countries, including Yemen, kept his mother Shaima Swileh from seeing her son until CAIR and a law firm filed an emergency lawsuit. Swileh arrived Dec. 19 after receiving a waiver from the U.S. State Department.

Abdullah’s father Ali Hassan brought him to the U.S. months ago to get medical care for a degenerative brain condition the kept worsening. The boy and father are U.S. citizens.