Politics & Government

7-year-old Syrian refugee tweets Trump ‘Am I terrorist?’

By Kate Irby

kirby@mcclatchy.com

February 01, 2017 01:37 PM

This image made from video released by Qasioun News Agency, a media opposition platform with reporters inside Syria, shows Fatemah Alabed, with her 7-year-old daughter Bana, speaking after they reached the Aleppo countryside following the evacuation of their city, Syria. They spoke to the cameras about their evacuation and their widely-distributed Twitter account. The mother and daughter pair maintained a Twitter account from inside east Aleppo that exposed the horrors of the government's siege of the rebel enclave in the city. Uncredited AP

President Donald Trump and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer have had conflicting messages on whether to characterize Trump’s immigration executive order as a “ban.” Trump seemed to try to clear that up in a tweet this morning, but a 7-year-old girl decided to focus on another part of that message.

Bana Alabed built a large social media following during her posts describing life in besieged Aleppo, which criticized the West for its failure to end the attacks. She has remained active on Twitter since she and her family evacuated to Turkey in December, frequently focusing on Trump.

One tweet Wednesday morning is gaining particular attention.

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It was in response to Trump’s tweet about the ban keeping “bad people” out of the country.

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It wasn’t the first time Trump’s ban was criticized for its effect on children. A 5-year-old boy, a U.S. citizen with an Iranian mother who flew in from Iran, was reportedly detained at Dulles International Airport for more than four hours. Spicer said those actions were necessary to keep people safe.

“To assume that just because of someone’s age and gender that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong,” Spicer said at a press conference.

Spicer gave the examples of the Boston Marathon bombers and San Bernardino shooters as reasons detaining children might be necessary. The younger of the two Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was 9 when he came into the U.S. as a refugee from Dagestan, a federal subject of Russia. San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook was a U.S. citizen. Tashfeen Malik, the other shooter and his wife, came to the U.S. on a fiancee visa from Saudi Arabia as an adult.

Neither Russia nor Saudi Arabia are included on the list of countries from which Trump has restricted travel. Those countries are Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.