In California, the 2-year-old boy whose Yemeni mother was banned from entering the U.S. due to the Trump administration’s travel ban died Friday. Abdullah Hassan, who was an American citizen, had a rare brain disorder and was being treated in the U.S., but his mother, Shaima Swileh, had to sue in order to get a waiver to travel because she was from Yemen—one of the five majority-Muslim countries whose citizens are barred from entering the U.S. They were reunited just over a week before the toddler’s death. This is Abdullah Hassan’s father, Ali Hassan.

Ali Hassan: “We are here today because my government failed our family. I am a U.S. citizen. My son is a U.S. citizen. The Muslim ban kept my wife from coming to the U.S. for over a year. It forced me to choose between my son’s health and keeping our family together. We are not angry, and we know our son did not die in vain. We hope, through Abdullah’s struggle and passing, that people who are affected by the Muslim ban, from Yemen, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Syria—that we hope, through his life, policy will be changed and families will be reunited.”