Photo by Alex Edelman.

Update: By 1:30 a.m. on Sunday morning at Dulles International Airport, most of the crowds and lawyers were gone, and the majority of the people held at the airport had been released.

“I believe tonight, momentarily, the last of the people at this airport will be released,” Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) said to the crowd that gathered around him around 12:30 a.m.

He had arrived shortly before midnight to hand-deliver the court order issued by a federal judge in Virginia that granted lawyers the ability to see legal residents being held in the secondary inspection area. Booker said he believed that Customs and Border Protection violated the court order by not letting attorneys back, as many of the lawyers had contended.

People familiar with the conversation between Booker and CBP say that no one from the agency ever presented themselves to the senator. Instead, they used a police go-between to pass written questions and answers.

Booker said that it was the beginning of a much larger legal battle, pitting the judiciary against the executive branch.

“Please do not grow weary,” he said. “We have a long fight.”

For Said Hajouli, a Syrian physician working in D.C., the legal fight was personal. His wife was set to join him in the area on Saturday with a J-2 visa and her plane from Turkey landed at Dulles.

Unlike many of the other families who had spent the day waiting, Hajouli did not get to embrace his loved one.

His lawyer, Alfred Robertson Jr., says that he was told by a second party that she will have “a comfortable place to stay tonight—I don’t know what that means.” Tomorrow, Robertson says, she will be transferred, most likely to a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office where she will seek asylum.

“They released everyone except for my wife,” says Hajouli. “How am I feeling? I’m not happy.”

Original: Lawyers at Dulles say that Customs and Border Protection is violating a court order issued Saturday night by a federal judge in Virginia.

The temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in part permits lawyers access to all legal permanent residents detained at Dulles International Airport, but attorneys still haven’t been let back by Customs and Border Protection as of 11:50 p.m., despite presenting them with the court order.

“We are actually trying to bring a court marshall to see if they can comply with the court order,” says Shahin Fallah, one of the many lawyers at the international terminal to help after President Donald Trump’s executive order barring people, including legal residents and visa holders, from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S. for the next 90 days and suspends the refugee admissions program for 120 days.

The demonstration this evening at Dulles has brought out dozens of lawyers trying to help people affected by the ban. Umair Javed is a local attorney who “started off as an immigrant,” he says. “My parents are visiting Pakistan for a wedding and my hope is that someone would be there for them.”

He notes that while Pakistan isn’t one of the countries currently affected, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine a situation where a similar policy could impact them.

A federal judge in New York issued an emergency stay against the order’s implementation that protects everyone with valid papers from deportation on Saturday evening.

But as the crowd of hundreds at Dulles continues to chant “Let them see their lawyers,” some permanent legal residents have been permitted to leave, leading to emotional family reunions.

“I’m so relieved,” says Mohsen Khosravi, an Iranian who has been waiting all day for his cousins at Dulles, one of whom is only five years old. “Our whole family was very upset. We didn’t know what to do.”

While Khosravi says that his family will celebrate tomorrow, “my dad is still in Iran,” he says. “He cannot come. We are still split in two parts. That is what this rule will do to our family—it will split us.”

Khosravi says he cannot leave the States for fear he won’t be allowed back.

It’s still unknown how many people remain in the secondary inspection area. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is not giving out information about how many people are in the holding area.

The crowd has reoriented from a tunnel of people greeting people who arrive to a new formation around the entrance to a CBP inspection area.

“Let them see their lawyers,” the crowd yells. Then a new chant emerges. “Let them see their moms.”

At around 11:50 p.m., Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) arrived at Dulles and entered the inspections office. He told media he was trying to help lawyers gain access to the secondary inspection area.

While lawyers don’t usually have access to the secondary inspection area, “it is unprecedented for green card holders to be held in secondary inspection,” says lawyer Dan Press.

More:
Local Congressmen Demanded To Speak With Customs And Border Protection At Dulles, Were Refused