The following is by NO MEANS an attempt to trivialize the unfortunate events under discussion, but in 2004 a quite prescient movie came out: "The Terminal" directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks as an Eastern European working man stranded in a United States international airport. He has very little English but he's, well, Tom Hanks, so he manages to get himself a job, a girlfriend, and become the bane of the manager of airport security, the underlying theme being that his common humanity triumphs over the odds of insentient bureacracy.

In one scene he pretty much saves another Eastern European man who is trying to bring medicine through customs for his mother. If the pills are what they are supposed to be, i e lifesaving medication for a person, he can't bring them through, but if they are for an animal, he can. Tom as translator does the right thing.

I didn't believe the movie corresponded to real events, but now I think it understated them, and was just a bit over optimistic, alas.