-Did you ever think the government
of the United States of America
was gonna get in the way
of you being with your husband?
-I do think, ultimately, we will be together.
How it's going to happen, I don't know.
-I'm hearing reports from other colleagues,
saying that, if you're an Iranian national,
your chances of getting a waiver are pretty bleak.
-"We will do what we can to see that the visa is adjudicated
as soon as the administrative processing is complete."
-When did you receive that letter?
-Over a year ago, August 2017.
-Wow.
-Go out to any person in the United States
after they get married,
on the day after their wedding day,
and say, "Hey, guess what.
There's a 2% chance that you and your wife
can live together,
maybe in two years from now,"
and see how many people would say, "Oh, that's great.
Sign me up for that.
I'll take that all day long."
-When I was a Washington Post correspondent in Iran,
I didn't plan on falling in love,
but I met and married an incredible Iranian woman
and, now, we're here in the United States,
building a life together, just like my parents did.
Americans now have the right to marry
whoever they want,
but, under President Trump's travel ban,
they're no longer guaranteed the right
to live here in the United States
with their foreign-born spouse.
-I was traveling in Iran for my 30th birthday
and I found myself in a kebab restaurant
and I looked over and I saw this young Persian woman
kind of laughing and smiling at me.
She basically came up to me and said, you know, "Hi.
My name is Mona.
I'm a master's student in chemistry.
Where are you from?"
-Yahya and I met on Instagram.
He was so cute and so sweet,
and so I finally answered him
and we started messaging a little bit on Instagram.
But, then, it kind of turned into "good mornings"
and starting our day off together,
or my day and his night.
-I really thought I would never see her again
and it wasn't until I returned home
that I opened my email box
and I found an email in there from Mona.
We ultimately decided to meet each other in Istanbul
and that's where we sort of began
to at least develop a connection there.
Because it was like, honestly,
her life wasn't that much different than mine.
-Azizam.
-Oh, baby, I just sit here, missing you.
-I miss you, too.
This man is across the world.
He's 7,000 miles away from me,
and what business do I have,
talking to him, you know?
Why, out of all the men in the world, why him?
But ...
I didn't stop.
-How is Shiraz? How is Iran?
How is my family?
-Oh, I love your family, and Iran is [speaking Persian].
We decided to get married
because we were meant to be together.
We are just so much of the same person
and our differences make up the other.
-Happy birthday, honey.
-Thank you, Mona.
-Mona is the most important thing to my life,
and I just said, "That's it. We're going to get married."
-Getting married, it was so amazing.
And then, you get home and it's so anticlimactic.
Because I don't get to return with him.
He didn't get to come home with me.
-Hi, Uncle Ahya.
-How are you, honey?
-Can you say, "Good, how are you?"
He started looking into immigration
and everything it takes to be
together permanently as husband and wife.
-Mona Ashraf Khorasani.
-The idea was that Mona would go to school.
She would earn her PhD in Kingston, Ontario,
and then, we just always continued to think,
"Okay, pretty soon, you'll have your PhD and then,
we can start planning our future together
here in the United States."
-I'm establishing new vetting measures to keep radical
Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America.
We don't want 'em here.
-This isn't specifically singling out people
with extremist ties
and banning those individuals
from coming into the country.
This is a blanket ban of all individuals
from specific countries.
-Lower courts struck down different versions of the ban.
But the Supreme Court ultimately sided with Trump.
The president now has the authority to blacklist countries
he deems a national security threat.
Because I cover Iran for The Washington Post,
I've been flooded with messages from Americans
separated from their husbands and wives,
terrified they'll never be together.
So I decided to go out and see what it looks like
when bureaucracy dead-ends
the relationships of Americans in love.
-Jason. -Nice to meet you.
-Nice to meet you as well. -Thanks so much for having us.
How you been? -I've been okay.
It's just a very alarming, frustrating situation.
-Yeah.
-Because, no matter what she does,
no matter what she accomplishes,
no matter what she does in her life,
she can't change the fact that she was born in Iran.
And that's what is so frustrating because,
as a businessman, as an engineer,
I'm used to solving problems
and that is a problem that cannot be solved.
We've been together for nine years.
I'm 39 years old.
What, am I gonna wait 'til I'm 42
to finally begin a life with my wife,
to finally start thinking about having children?
My life with Mona is being held up over bureaucracy.
-Hello. -Hello, Cyrus.
Ricky Smith.
-Yes, hi, hello. -Cyrus, Jason Rezaian is here
as well, from The Washington Post.
-Hi, Cyrus. How are ya?
-Hi, Jason.
-I had one question for you, first.
You know, we've heard a lot about this
possibility of waivers.
We reached out to the State Department
earlier this week
and, you know, in their written response to us,
they said that, you know, every application
is automatically put into the waiver process.
-Are you aware of anyone who's gotten a waiver?
-I'm hearing reports saying
that waivers have not been successful.
Either they've been denied outright
or they're still pending.
And it's really tragic because this is such a routine matter
under our immigration law.
Clearly, a U.S. citizen, like you,
should not be deprived of uniting with your spouse.
-Do you think that, when the powers that be,
if and when they start to realize that good Americans,
like yourself, are being affected by this,
that they might have a change of heart?
-I just feel like so misled.
I keep being told that there's ways and that,
"Oh, he's your husband. He can come here.
He should be allowed," and I feel like
I'm being led down this rabbit hole that's just...
It's just so emotionally taxing
because you get your hopes up, you know?
You think that, "Okay, well, here,
I can apply for this waiver
and we fit and everything's perfect.
We are perfect for the criteria,"
and then, you hear nothing, again.
You're just still in that process.
I've lived my whole life here.
My dad is a veteran.
This is my home.
And the fact that I might actually have to leave it
because
my husband's not welcome here under this ban, is ...
it makes me angry.
-How is it possible to carry on a marriage
at this great distance?
-When, you know, we don't communicate, there is nothing.
That's all that we have.
He's a whole support network that I'm not allowed to be with.
So, yeah, um, yeah.
-[crying]
-I know I feel like our family is missing
one of its members and it hurts.
It's not like it's just Olivia,
take her away or they move away somewhere.
He wants to be a part of our family.
-Just thinking about all of it
and just the gravity of the situation
and just how unfair it is.
-If you get to that point
where you're in front of somebody
who can make that decision, right,
could wave a magic wand,
what is it that you would say to that one person
who's makin' the decision,
knowing that there are thousands
of other people going through the same thing?
-That person, whoever has that decision-making authority,
needs to understand that families are being separated
and there really isn't a discernible benefit to that.
-I'm not contacting anybody now.
I'm not calling senators because,
when senators call me back,
they send me the exact same email I receive every time.
And so I feel, at this point, why waste my time
and keep sharing this heartbreaking story
that is so emotional for me and so hard to repeat,
over and over and over again,
to people for nothing?
What's the point?
We still don't live together,
and I still don't get to wake up with him
or say good night to him, and share my day with him.
My entire life has been put on hold.