Chiengkuach Majok was looking forward to April 28. After years of living an ocean away, his wife and four children were due to arrive that day from Kenya, where they’d settled to escape the turmoil in their native South Sudan.
It took thousands of dollars, five years and endless patience to get his wife a visa, and Majok was ready for their new life together in South Burlington. He had an apartment lined up, one with access to a pool where he’d teach his kids to swim after missing so many other “firsts”: birthdays, bike rides, lost baby teeth. He envisioned summer days with soccer matches and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cones.
Majok saw promise for his family’s future in America, a place that welcomed him more than two decades ago after he escaped his country’s brutal civil war. Now an American citizen, Majok is just a few months from earning a PhD in sustainable development policy and economics from the University of Vermont. He wants the same opportunity for his children, should they choose it.
But three weeks before his family was to arrive, a diplomatic spat thousands of miles away unraveled Majok’s plans. The U.S. announced it was barring entry to South Sudanese passport holders, effective immediately.
The policy was President Donald Trump’s first major travel sanction against another country in his second term, though he has since followed up with sweeping travel bans, including for Sudan proper. The administration is also deporting immigrants from other countries to South Sudan, a scheme codified in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this month.
The immigration crackdown has caused pain and confusion for Vermont’s South Sudanese community, whose long-awaited plans are now suddenly tied to the whims of a president who thrives on chaos. As the weeks wore on, the excitement that Majok had allowed himself to feel was replaced by a familiar, bitter emotion from his past: helplessness.
“The kids get excited; your wife gets excited. You’re telling them, ‘You guys are coming soon,'” Majok said an interview last month. “And right now, there is nothing to say.”
Out of Africa,
Then Back Again
Majok, now 43, was 5 years old when civil war in Sudan ripped him from his family. He and thousands of other children trekked through the jungle, frequently without food or water, seeking refuge in Kenya. Many didn’t survive the journey.
The children were collectively known as the “Lost Boys,” named after the orphans in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Starting in 2001, about 3,600 Lost Boys were resettled in the U.S., including 40 in Vermont. U.S. Census data from 2020 show that about 3,200 Vermonters are from sub-Saharan Africa, with just over 50 from South Sudan.
Majok, then 21, resettled in Winooski in September 2003. Accustomed to the warm African sun, he struggled to adjust to Vermont weather. But he was optimistic about his new home. Shortly after arriving, he joined other refugees for a ceremony at Winooski City Hall, the Burlington Free Press reported at the time.
“This welcome is something we never dreamed of,” Majok said at the event. “I have never seen my parents since the 1980s. Now there are people here treating me like their child.”
Within a month, Majok had a job as a housekeeper at the former Fletcher Allen Healthcare hospital. He enrolled in community college and later transferred to UVM, where he earned a degree in economics. In 2009, he became a U.S. citizen.
A graduate school internship with USAID took Majok back to his home country in 2011, just days after it split from Sudan to become the world’s newest nation. Working with the Bank of South Sudan, Majok helped the country adopt a new currency.
His time at USAID brought Majok full circle. He credits the agency for saving the Lost Boys’ lives during their time at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. USAID has since been dismantled by Trump, prompting protests among the 300,000 refugees currently in the camp and, last month, public rebukes from former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
It was during this stint in South Sudan that Majok met his wife, Joe Deu Dit, whom he married in 2013. The couple would have four children over the next 12 years, the youngest now just 8 months old. All of them are American citizens, having gone through a process that grants citizenship to U.S. nationals’ children who are born abroad.
“It just doesn’t make a lot of sense that you are being punished because you were born in a certain country.” Chiengkuach Majok
Majok applied for his wife’s visa in 2020, but a paperwork snafu, pandemic-related delays and a backlog of family reunification cases halted progress for several years. Finally, this past January, Joe learned she would meet with an immigration officer on Valentine’s Day, a fitting date for the final hurdle in reuniting husband and wife.
Majok put down a $1,200 security deposit on the new apartment. He bought a plane ticket to Nairobi so he could attend his wife’s interview. And on February 18, her visa was finally stamped. A delay with his daughter’s paperwork pushed their expected departure to April 28.
Soon after, diplomatic ties began to fray between the two nations. According to media reports, South Sudan refused to accept a man who had been deported by the U.S., claiming he was actually Congolese. The following day, April 5, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked all South Sudanese visas, announcing the move in a post on X.
“It is time for the Transitional Government of South Sudan to stop taking advantage of the United States,” Rubio wrote in a follow-up statement on the U.S. State Department website. “Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them.”
Majok called the embassy in Nairobi and was told there was nothing they could do. That Rubio, himself a child of immigrants, would set this policy defies all logic, Majok said.
“It just doesn’t make a lot of sense that you are being punished because you were born in a certain country,” he said. Rubio’s kids, Majok added, “are not any different from mine.” He had to let the new digs — and the security deposit — go.
Waiting Game
Just off busy Dorset Street, three of Majok’s friends share the same South Burlington apartment and the same predicament. All of them have families in Africa who are victims of Trump’s new immigration policies.
The men have lived together for eight years, but their home is sparsely furnished, bordering on bare, in what is either an indictment of their interior design sense or evidence that they see the place as transitory, a waypoint on the road to a fuller life.
On a recent June afternoon, their television was tuned to a channel promoting that evening’s NBA draft. With the 10th overall pick, the Houston Rockets would take Khaman Maluach, who was later traded to the Phoenix Suns. Because he is South Sudanese, Maluach will have to apply for a special athlete visa to stay in the U.S.
“That was the dream: That you settle and bring your family here.” Atem Deng
There are no such carve-outs for the families of the South Burlington roommates — or for Williston resident Atem Deng, their friend and a fellow Lost Boy whose fiancée is stuck in South Sudan. His three daughters with a previous wife, however, are with him in Vermont.
“That was the dream: That you settle and bring your family here,” Deng said, pulling up a chair in the living room as his school-aged daughters played nearby. “Now this [policy] comes, and nobody knows the future, whether they will be here or no.”
The men have tried to get answers. In May, Majok and a friend drove to Rutland, where U.S. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) was hosting a community meeting. They ended up speaking with a staffer, who said that as long as Republicans control Congress, Democrats have no leverage on the issue.
In a statement to Seven Days, Welch lamented that South Sudanese Vermonters have become a casualty of a conflict between two governments.
“But that is the way this administration operates: They shoot first and aim later, and as a result, a lot of innocent people suffer the consequences,” Welch said.
The policy has also caused confusion. That June afternoon, Jurkuch Atem had just returned from Kenya, where he was summoned for his wife’s immigration interview despite the policy barring South Sudanese passport holders. Hoping there would be a work-around, he boarded a plane only to learn, once he arrived, that the interview had been postponed until August. After a painful goodbye with his two sons, he flew back to the U.S.
David Thuom, another roommate, hasn’t started his family’s paperwork as he waits for the tensions to diffuse. Meantime, the situation has strained his relationship with his wife, who lives in Uganda with their three children.
“They thought that we deceived them,” Thuom said of his family. “They say, ‘Why does it take a long time?'”
Just as when they were child refugees, these men remain separated from their families, and their fates are tied to the willingness of governments to cooperate. They only have one another to lean on.
As afternoon inched toward evening, Deng’s daughters were ready to leave. His youngest, Deborah, stood on her tiptoes next to his chair, joking that she was taller than her six-foot-three father, if only when he’s sitting down. She collapsed into giggles.
Next to them, Jurkuch Atem glanced at his phone, the background a picture of his two sons in matching black-and-white outfits. Over his shoulder was one of the room’s few decorations: a miniature American flag, sitting askew on the fireplace mantle.
A Change in Course
A week later, on June 28, Majok’s phone pinged. A friend’s wife had been cleared to fly to the U.S. despite holding a South Sudanese passport. With a renewed sense of hope, Majok emailed the embassy in Nairobi to ask about his own wife’s case.
A response signed by a mysterious “Customer Representative 9” confirmed that his family was also allowed to travel. If it was a scam, Majok was willing to take the risk. Within 30 minutes, he’d bought plane tickets to Boston for his family. They would arrive on July 7.
The night before, Majok couldn’t sleep. He’d learned that his friend’s wife had been detained at the airport, and he worried the same would happen to his family during their layover in Dubai, where his wife wouldn’t have cellphone service to contact him. It wasn’t until she landed in Boston, and immediately called him, that Majok knew it was real.
A video recorded by a friend captured the family’s reunion. Majok’s middle son, age 6, dropped his pink suitcase and ran toward his father with arms outstretched, his wide smile showing a few missing baby teeth. Off camera, strangers cheered and clapped.
On the ride home, the kids got their first taste of American cuisine at a Taco Bell in West Lebanon, N.H. Stuffed and sleepy, they spent the night at a hotel.
The reason why Majok’s family was able to travel remains as murky as the government’s motives in denying them permission in the first place. But Majok wasn’t dwelling on it.
The next day, back in South Burlington, he was again looking for a new apartment. He was also planning his family’s first outing in Vermont. There would be soccer, he said, and probably ice cream.
The original print version of this article was headlined “‘Nobody Knows the Future’ | A diplomatic spat is creating chaos for South Sudanese Vermonters”
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This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2025.
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