A University of Maryland doctoral candidate has returned from his home country of Sudan after being unable to come back for the first part of spring semester because of President Trump’s travel ban.
Abubakr Suliman Eltayeb Mohamed Hamid sent an email Thursday to Garrett Bradford, Graduate Student Government’s vice president for committee affairs, informing Bradford that he was back in the United States.
Bradford has been in touch with Hamid, an engineering doctoral candidate who also works as a live-in Arabic language teacher at this university’s Language House, since Trump signed an executive order issuing the ban on Jan. 27. Hamid was in the process of renewing his visa when the ban — which blocked citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States for 90 days — went into effect.
[READ MORE: A UMD student is scrambling to return to the U.S. amid Trump travel ban suspension]
Hamid scrambled to renew his visa after a federal judge temporarily halted the travel ban on Feb. 3, a decision that the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld on Feb. 9.
Hamid is one of thousands of people the ban affected, and is grateful for all of the support he received while he was stuck in Sudan, Bradford said.
About 350 people from this university — mostly graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and visiting scholars — were affected by the order, university President Wallace Loh wrote in a message to the campus community on Jan. 31. One student from this university, Maryam Aida Mohammadi, who is a green card holder, was detained at Washington Dulles International Airport with her 5-year-old cousin on Jan. 28.
Security released her after about five hours. Her cousin, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, was later released as well.
The order received heavy protests at airports across the U.S. along with international backlash. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) took to Facebook in January to express his opposition to the ban and thanking the federal judge who blocked the ban.
“We must remain vigilant and fight back,” he wrote.