A Palestinian Teenager, Accepted to Harvard, Was Deported Because of His Friends’ Social-Media Posts

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Ismail B. Ajjawi was set to start classes next week at Harvard University as a member of the Class of 2023.

Instead, the 17-year-old Palestinian never got out of Boston’s Logan International Airport, where he spent hours being questioned by immigration officials before his visa was revoked and he was deported to Lebanon, where he had been living.

According to initial reporting by The Harvard Crimson, the officials questioned Ajjawi along with several other international students, but kept Ajjawi after releasing the others to further interrogate him about his religious practices. After the officials searched his electronic devices, they questioned him again, this time about some of his friends’ social-media activity that they deemed anti-American.

An immigration official “called me into a room, and she started screaming at me,” Ajjawi told the Crimson. “She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the U.S. on my friends list.”

Michael McCarthy, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, wrote in a statement that the agency had determined Ajjawi was “inadmissible” to the country based on information found in the search.

“Applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the U.S. by overcoming ALL grounds of inadmissibility, including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds,” he wrote.

A new rule requiring all visa applicants to submit their social-media user names for review was put in place this year. But Ajjawi had already had his student visa approved; immigration officials revoked it.

Jason Newton, a spokesman for the university, said that Harvard was working to find a resolution before classes start, on September 3.

“The university is working closely with the student’s family and appropriate authorities to resolve this matter so that he can join his classmates in the coming days,” Newton wrote in an email to The Chronicle.

Ajjawi was awarded a scholarship to study in the United States by Amideast, a nonprofit organization that supports international cultural and academic exchange. He told the Crimson that the organization was providing him with legal assistance.

A representative of Amideast did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Adam Julian, director of international student and scholar services and outreach at Appalachian State University, said that the options for universities, even a powerhouse like Harvard, are limited.

“What people don’t often understand is that Customs and Border Protection really has unfettered authority at the border,” he said. “There’s very little we can do, to be quite honest, other than try to prepare our students the best that we can.”

A Growing Concern

Elizabeth Goss, an immigration lawyer who specializes in representing academics, researchers, and students, said that while the search of Ajjawi’s devices would normally constitute a Fourth Amendment violation, the same protections don’t apply to a noncitizen who has yet to enter the country.

“When you’re at the border, you don’t have due-process rights, you don’t have the right to an attorney,” Goss told The Chronicle. “Under the guise of national security, CBP officers often can get access to your passwords. And, sure, you can refuse them. But if you’re a 17-year-old, 18-year-old student that wants to come to school, and thinks that this is a quick way to get through the problem, you’re probably going to give it to them.”

Still, she said she had never seen a case like Ajjawi’s, in which a student visa holder was deemed inadmissible by association.

This isn’t the first time Harvard has run up against entry problems for international students. In 2017 four Iranian graduate researchers were denied entry to the United States as a result of President Trump’s 90-day ban on immigrants from Iran and other majority-Muslim countries. And in July the university’s president, Lawrence Bacow, wrote an open letter to the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, relaying his concerns about “increased scrutiny of foreign students and scholars … from certain countries.”

Goss said that vetting at the border for students with F-1 visas has become much more strict since Trump took office, in 2017.

“Customs and Border Protection has the right to make determinations with regards to somebody’s entry, but they haven’t wielded that power traditionally in the way that we have seen under the current administration,” she said.

Recent episodes have involved students from China being denied entry over suspicions of “academic fraud,” but Goss said knowing what could trigger immigration officials’ scrutiny has become harder to predict across the board.

“The trend is delay, deny, discourage,” she said. “Before, there were certain flags. But these days, it’s a little bit of a Magic Eight Ball. … It’s not really clear what a red flag might be anymore.”

Liam Knox is an editorial intern at The Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter @liamhknox, or email him at liam.knox@chronicle.com.