This article originally appeared on TwentyThirty.
When U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January 2017 banning refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, protests rose all over the country.
Attorney Sufyan Sohel was part of a group of lawyers waiting for arriving passengers at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to offer them free legal advice. They organized hundreds of volunteers ensuring that for the three months following the ban, a lawyer would be available around the clock.
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Over a year has passed and the third version of the so-called travel ban is in effect while the fight to dismiss it as racist and a violation of human rights goes on.
His fight against the travel ban is only one of Sufyan’s efforts to help those who face injustice. He currently serves as Deputy Director of CAIR-Chicago (Council on American-Islamic Relations), a Chicago-based non-profit that protects the First Amendment religious rights of Muslim Americans.
On average, the office receives 400 reported cases of discrimination per year – a number that almost doubled in 2017.
Sufyan Sohel is a member of the Transatlantic Core Group and took part in the Connected Cities Workshop in Hamburg in 2017. He is a member of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network.
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This article is presented in collaboration with TwentyThirty.
TwentyThirty is an online magazine presented by the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt. It sheds light on the social, political, and environmental challenges we face and features inspiring Responsible Leaders who are working to solve them. Follow their work on Facebook.
