Visa holders hurry to board flights to U.S. as Trump's travel ban remains blocked

Visa holders from the seven Muslim-majority countries who were turned away due to President Donald Trump's travel ban are now scrambling to board planes to the U.S. while the ban remains suspended.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle suspended Trump's executive order while the court hears a case brought by the states of Washington and Minnesota. On Sunday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request from the Department of Justice to reinstate the ban.

Civil rights advocates are now advising people who could travel to get on the earliest flights they could find while the travel ban is suspended, Associated Press reported.

"We're telling them to get on the quickest flight ASAP," said Rula Aoun, director of the Arab-American Civil Rights League in Dearborn, Michigan. The group has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Detroit, stating that Trump's executive order is unconstitutional.

Several volunteer lawyers and interpreters waited inside John F. Kennedy's Terminal 4 in New York carrying handmade signs in Arabic and Farsi saying, "we're lawyers, we're here to help. We're not from the government."

One Yemeni family had to leave two of four children behind because they did not have the proper documents. The father and two children are U.S. citizens while the mother has an immigrant visa.

"They just don't want to take a chance of waiting," said Renee Paradis, who is one of the volunteer lawyers at JFK airport.

U.S. officials have reported that about 60,000 visas had been "provisionally revoked" as a result of Trump's order. There was initially some confusion whether green card holders were affected by the ban until the White House clarified last Wednesday that they can enter or leave the U.S. as they pleased.

Despite the clarification from the White House, green card holder Ammar Alnajjar cut short his three-month visit to Turkey and returned immediately to the U.S. when the ban was lifted.

"I got to study. I got to do some work," said Alnajjar, who fled the civil war in Yemen and moved to the U.S. from Turkey in 2015.

Airport officials in Cairo said that there were 33 migrants from Yemen, Syria and Iraq on their way to the U.S. The migrants have not been previously turned away, but they were rushing to take advantage of the suspension of the travel ban.