DENVER (AP) - At least three Colorado State University students have been affected by President Trump’s order halting immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations.
University officials are working with the students and will help any other affected students they become aware of, CSU president Tony Frank wrote on Facebook late Sunday. He said the three students have been “caught up in returning from their home countries” and are being connected with legal services as needed, but he didn’t include any other details about their situations.
One of those affected, CSU doctoral student Hanan Isweiri, had traveled to Libya with her 1-year-old son to visit her sick mother and attend her father’s funeral. She was stopped in Jordan on her way home and has been stranded at the airport for three days, KUSA-TV in Denver reported Monday (https://goo.gl/7XTczW ).
“I thought maybe they will fix it very quickly because it’s not fair to just leave people in airports,” she told the station, adding that she has not slept in three days.
Asked what she would say to President Trump if she could, Iswieri said, “I (would) tell him you are a father and I’m a mother of four kids. Three of them are not with me now, and I’m stuck in an airport so I cannot go out or fly to U.S.A.”
Isweiri, who is earning her doctorate at CSU’s Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, has an extended visa for optional practical training in the United States. She has been living in the United States since 2010, and her husband and three children are currently in Fort Collins.
“It’s not fair. We’re coming here just to get a degree, that’s our main goal,” her husband, Ahmed Buhalfaia, said through a translator.
Trump’s order suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days and instituted a 90-day ban on all entry to the United States from citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
It also halts entry to the U.S. by Syrian refugees indefinitely.
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