The Haskell Free Library is unusually situated on the U.S.-Canada border, straddling Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. During the first Trump administration, Muslim families used the library’s reading room as a safe, neutral space to meet loved ones they couldn’t visit in the U.S. because of a travel ban enacted in 2017.

Those encounters formed the inspiration for a new play being performed by the Weston Theater Company .

Playwright and director Kareem Fahmy says it’s taken on new meaning in President Donald Trump's second term.

When word got out about the clandestine family reunions on the Vermont border during Trump’s first term, Fahmy says it instantly struck a nerve.

Joe Mazza / Courtesy

“The second I started reading about it, I was like, oh, I know this library. I

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