A handful of international students filtered through the Slutzker Center for International Services Tuesday afternoon to meet one-on-one with university lawyers and ask questions about President Donald Trump’s recent executive order banning immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries.

The attorneys, from Syracuse University’s Office of University Counsel, met with students at the center for several hours, first in the morning and then in the afternoon.

Keith Kobland, a media manager for the university, said about 10 people attended the earlier session at SU. About 10 attended the afternoon session as well.

The executive order, signed on Jan. 27, bans immigration to the United States from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. It has sparked fierce controversy in the U.S. Protests erupted across the country in the days after the order was signed, including in Syracuse where hundreds of protesters and Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner rallied against the ban at the Syracuse Hancock International Airport.

The future of the ban is currently unclear, as a U.S. federal judge issued a ruling that temporarily suspended the ban late last week, allowing immigrants from the affected countries to again enter the U.S.

Nada Odeh, an SU graduate student in the museum studies program who fled Syria in 2012 with her family, attended the open house and said it was helpful.

“I want to know what my position is right now — you know, what shall I do,” she said.

Odeh said she and the lawyer she spoke with exchanged emails and that the lawyer is going to do some research on the ban’s potential impacts on Odeh’s position in the U.S. and get back to her. Odeh also said she thinks that overall, the university has handled the executive order and its repercussions well, and that has been comforting for her.

Nitinand Angubolkul, a senior entrepreneurship and accounting double major, said that although she isn’t directly impacted by the ban because she is from Thailand, the event was helpful. The lawyer redirected her to some information she hadn’t heard of before about the executive order and its effects, she said.

Published on February 7, 2017 at 10:12 pm

Contact Sam: sfogozal@syr.edu | @SamOgozalek