Syrian doctor caught in U.S. travel ban gives up, moves to Canada
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Syrian doctor says he won’t return to the United States to finish his studies at Brown University because of the Trump administration’s travel ban.
Khaled Almilaji said Wednesday there’s too much uncertainty, even though he possibly could get a student visa under the scaled-back version of the ban. The administration has given itself a Thursday deadline for implementing it.
Almilaji, 35, moved to Canada this month to pursue his master’s degree at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He said it’s unfortunate he had to withdraw from Brown, but “bad things happen and you have to adapt.”
He’s still working with his mentors at the Ivy League school as he tries to reopen a large underground hospital for women and children in northwest Syria. He plans to get specialists at Brown to train hospital staff online and answer their questions about complicated cases.