Take That Travel Ban! Ellen DeGeneres Pays A Refugee's Student Debt

Last month, Ellen DeGeneres used the plot of her hit movie Finding Dory to criticize President Donald Trump's travel ban.

Though Dory, an Australian fish, is able to reach America in a quest to find her parents, "she ends up separated from her family," DeGeneres explained, per The Huffington Post. "But the other animals help Dory. Animals that don’t even need her. Animals that don't have anything in common with her. They help her, even though they’re completely different colors. Because that’s what you do when you see someone in need — you help them."

This past week, the 59-year-old comedian put her money where her mouth is and gave a Muslim refugee the gift of a lifetime: a check for $22,000 to pay off all of her student loans.

According to theGrio, Ekhlas Ahmed didn't speak a word of English when she fled Sudan at age 12 to escape the Darfur genocide. 

After getting horribly lost on the first day of school in the U.S. because she accidentally got off at the wrong bus stop, Ahmed said she was determined to learn English. 

She did so by studying hard — and by watching The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Now teaching English as a grad student in Maine, Ahmed recently wrote to DeGeneres to thank her for helping her learn the language. 

"I was a senior in college and I was thinking, 'Besides my parents, who was the person that helped me get here? Who was that person?' And I couldn't think of anybody except for you," Ahmed told DeGeneres, "so I decided to write you a letter."

DeGeneres said she was so moved by Ahmed's story that she teamed up with Shutterfly to pay off every single penny of her student loans.

"It's not every day you meet someone as inspiring as Ekhlas," DeGeneres wrote on Instagram beneath a picture of the two of them. "Paying off her student loans was an honor."

Watch DeGeneres' interview with Ahmed in the video above (and get ready to cry some happy tears).