A good friend of mine has a somewhat similar story. Originally from Germany, she is a visiting researcher at an American university on a J-1 visa. Her husband is a refugee in Germany, who is going through education there and working toward obtaining German citizenship this summer. She used to travel to Germany often to see him since he cannot visit her in the United States because of his citizenship (his country is on a list of countries whose citizens are banned from entering the United States). Her employment was under a two-year contract, which was renewed for another year. Now she needs to renew her J-1 visa, which means she needs to travel to a consulate in Germany to do it. The US embassies have suspended issuing these visas. Their website says the decision to issue an emergency J-1 visa is on a case-by-case basis. She applied for an appointment. The embassy did not see her case as "an emergency", so her application was denied. It all happened before the EO was issued yesterday, which exacerbated her stress even further. She cannot pack up and move things, like many of her books or furniture, for example, because the shipping of these things between the United States and the European Union has been suspended due to COVID-19, as far as I understand it. She doesn't have a job in Germany and jobs in academia are hard to come by these days. And academia is not quick processing job applications. It can take months or even a couple of years before a decision is made. She cannot continue working on her book, which hurts her chances of employment in the future. So she is stuck in the US, where at least she can continue to work. He is stuck in Germany. They haven't seen each other in months.