U.S. officials turned away a 17-year-old Palestinian incoming Harvard freshman last week after he was questioned about his friends’ social media posts, according to the Harvard Crimson.
The 17-year-old, a resident of Tyre, Lebanon, was deported about eight hours after arriving at Logan International Airport in Boston and said in a written statement obtained by the Crimson that immigration officials questioned him for hours and searched his phone and computer.
Would have been better to give a link to the referenced Harvard Crimson article:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/8/27/incoming-freshman-deported/
Wow…I am imagining my son at age 17 being treated like that upon arrival in another country. ?
Hard to say given that we have heard only one side of the story. I’m sure Harvard will help him challenge the exclusion if they feel there is any legal basis to do so.
I wonder why he is called Palestinian if he’s from Lebanon. When we were in Beirut, almost every Lebanese person we met was adamant that he or she was NOT Palestinian.
Perhaps he lacks Lebanese citizenship. I expect they are referring to the type of passport he was travelling under.
Could be. I’m going to see if my son in Beirut has heard anything about this story.
There are non-Lebanese living in Lebanon. A few hundred thousand are Palestinian.
Deported? In fact, it appears that this person was simply denied entry. Ironic, but in some ways analogous to how Harvard itself has retracted admissions offers to certain prospective students – based on social media posts.
He lives in Lebanon; I don’t know his passport situation, but there are about 500K Palestinians living in Lebanon of which only about 60K hold Lebanese passports. The few Palestinians I’ve met living in Lebanon definitely identify as Palestinians
I was about to say the same thing. I’m not an immigration expert nor a native English speaker, but my understanding is one needs to be in the US before being deported. He was denied entry.
Actually, students are denied entry more often than you might think. In the current climate, citizens of certain countries are being scrutinized more carefully … and now that students are required to provide their social media accounts when applying for an F-1 visa, their accounts & those of their friends are obviously being reviewed.
Deported is hyperbole. All non citizens presenting at a border need to pay attention to current conditions (globally, this is not just a US thing). The only reason this story gets traction is the Harvard link, if this kid was going to Nowheresville U, you wouldn’t even get a story.
I agree that the story is getting attention, press and traction because the student is Harvard bound. What alarms me about the story is that the reason for being denied entry into the US is that the social media entries that got him denied are not his, but of others who posted. To require entrants to scrub all social media entries and block them in preparation for entry into this country seems extreme to me. When this becomes a practice, we’ll end up losing this as a source of possibly valuable info.
It’s also a development that is frightening in terms of standards that appear to be creeping into our society. Who among any of us. An guarantee what input we get on our social media? Heck, I have a spam folder filled with uninvited creeps selling me enlarged organs and hook up services.
We don’t know what entries have immigration officials pause and then denial, so it is possible that the political sentiments set off true alarms. Hopefully, this is reviewed carefully, and standards set. I’m glad this happened to a Harvard student because that is what it took to bring this to our attention.
My guess is that the social media posts - if indeed posts are really the issue - are actually the student’s, not those of his friends. We only have one side of the story, and frankly much of it sounds far fetched. Anyone smart enough to get into Harvard is smart enough to spin a story. The CBP official started “screaming” at the student? OK…
This definitely bears watching but I think we have heard the last of Mr. Ajjawi. The American University in Beirut for sure has room for someone with an outside scholarship.
My son is thriving at AUB. 
When I forwarded the story to him, he said he and his Syrian girlfriend blame the student for not scrubbing his social media. Even his GF did that before coming to AUB to study (she is on a full-ride scholarship from the US government).
We may not have the full story, but I’m concerned about the invasion of privacy by TSA’s right to demand anyone, including US citizens, to surrender their personal electronic data when entering the US. More and more countries reciprocate the treatment by adopting the same procedures. Do we really expect to catch terrorists by examining their smartphones? Wouldn’t you expect they’d wipe their phones clean before they board their flights to the US?
So you are literally just making things up to feel better about a situation? I agree we should hear the other side out too but come on…
Don’t know the full story but - beyond invasion of privacy, another concerning thing is: making one responsible for their ‘friends’ social media posts. If that is really true, wonder if it has legal standing.
Agree with posts above that this story is getting traction because of Harvard name. I heard many anecdotal incidents where people with valid H1 work visas being denied the entry.
Wouldn’t you expect the border officials to stop anyone with terrorist plans/materials/diagrams in their possession, regardless of whether the format was printed or digital?
I was a US/UK Fulbright in 1998. I was studying international relations and terrorism at St. Andrews. Entering Heathrow, I had several of my texts on me, probably about ten volumes in my travel backpack on the politics of nuclear weapons and international terrorism. Going through passport control as a U.S. Citizen, I got the special treatment. Understandably, in my mind (pre-9/11, mind you). I spent three hours being queried, questions, and my documents being reviewed. I certainly “got” it. The UK was serious about terrorism. The IRA was still a threat at the time. I was very much a guest in their country. Since that experience, I have never taken a border crossing for granted. Everyone in my experience was respectful (and in the end it was humorous), but at the time it was quite serious.