Brooklyn CUNY Student Stuck In Iran Under Trump's Travel Ban

BROOKLYN, NY — On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus defended President Donald Trump's recent executive order on immigration by saying it led to just 109 people being detained at the nation's airports. Among the categories of people absent from that calculation, however, are foreign students studying at American universities who may have been blocked from re-entering the country.

Trump's order could affect as many as 120 students in the CUNY system who come from the seven countries included in the immigration ban and who hold F1 student visas, according to Hercules Reid, Student Government Association president at CUNY's City Tech campus. A CUNY spokesperson could not immediately confirm this number.

As of Monday, it was unclear how many of those students were abroad when Trump signed the order.

We do know of at least one, though: Saira Rafiee, a Lefferts Gardens resident and 31-year-old PhD student in political science who wrote on Facebook that she was blocked from coming back to the U.S. following a visit to her family in Iran.

"I got on the flight to Abu Dhabi, but there at the airport was told that I would not be able to enter the US," Rafiee wrote. "I had to stay there for nearly 18 hours, along with 11 other Iranians, before getting on the flight back to Tehran. I have no clue whether I would ever be able to go back to the school I like so much, or to see my dear friends there. But my story isn’t as painful and terrifying as many other stories I have heard these days."

"The media has published enough statistics during the past few days to show how irrelevant this order is to the fight against terrorism," Rafiee continued. "It is time to call things by their true names; this is Islamophobia, racism, fascism."

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately return a request for comment on Rafiee's situation.

In a Sunday statement, CUNY spokeswoman Lori Gold said, "The ban undermines the freedom that enriches scholarship and the Graduate Center, an academic institution with global reach."

"Today, our top concern is for our student Saira Rafiee (Political Science), who was refused re-entry to the United States this weekend," Gold wrote. "We continue to work closely with the CUNY Chancellor's office and U.S. authorities to ensure the well-being of all members of our community.”

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams called for Rafiee to be let back into the country at a press conference Monday outside the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Saying Trump's order had produced a "state of total disorder," Adams said that, "diversity not only rules in Brooklyn, but it rules in the country."

"It starts with the Muslim faith, we don't know where it ends up," Adams added, though the Trump administration has denied its immigration order is any any way a ban on Muslims.

The borough president called for all schools to establish point people to help students and families impacted by the order. He also said he has yet to be in touch with any federal officials concerning Rafiee's status, or the status of students like her, though he pledged to be going forward.

"I stand here today united with my CUNY family," said Reid, the student body president, who also spoke at the press conference.

"You cannot set us against immigrants because that is who we are," Reid said, noting that 40 percent of CUNY's student body is foreign-born. "We are here to stay, and we [will] fight any effort to marginalize us."

Hercules Reid speaks at Monday's press conference.

"No person is illegal — thought has no borders," said Barbara Bowen, who heads CUNY's Professional Staff Congress to which Rafiee belongs, describing Trump's order as a "dangerous, counterproductive [and] immoral" act.

At the fathering, a BMCC student named Ibrahim whose family is from Yemen said his relatives were "in shock" after the order was announced. Nationals of Yemen are among those blocked from entering the U.S. for 90 days under the executive order.

"It didn't really make sense to them," Ibrahim said of Trump's action, adding that it won't enhance national security, which he "completely values."

"There is definitely some sort of target toward Muslims," in the order, he said.

[Editor's note: this story has been updated for accuracy.]

Pictured at top: Saira Rafiee. Image via Facebook.