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Border & Immigration

Yemeni Student Back In San Diego After Travel Ban Lifted

Assemblymember Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, attends a protest at the San Diego International Airport, Jan. 29, 2017.
@ToddGloria / Twitter
Assemblymember Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, attends a protest at the San Diego International Airport, Jan. 29, 2017.
Yemeni Student Back In San Diego After Travel Ban Lifted
A court injunction, lifting Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, allows Wasim Ghaleb to return to the Grossmont College campus.

A San Diego college student from Yemen is back in the U.S. and ready to resume classes at Grossmont College. He was able to return, thanks to a court injunction on President Trump's travel ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries.

RELATED: Judge Orders Halt To Trump’s Ban For Immigrant Visa Holders

Wasim Ghaleb is one of three California college students who has brought suit against the Trump administration for discrimination based on religious belief. In fact, Trump's travel ban had stranded Ghaleb in Saudi Arabia, where he traveled last month to visit relatives.

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But a spokesman for the ACLU says the court injunction that temporarily lifted the travel ban allowed Ghaleb to fly into LAX last night. Grossmont College officials confirm he is was back on campus Tuesday.

Ghaleb's lawsuit is being brought with legal help from the ACLU, which wants it to be certified as a class-action suit, on behalf of all people in California affected by the ban.

One of the lawyers working with the ACLU is San Francisco attorney Adam Lauridsen, who says his plaintiffs are bringing suit based on the first amendment to the constitution, guaranteeing religious liberty.

"It targets a specific group, Muslims, and aims to prevent them from immigrating to the United States, from visiting the United States and being a part of the diverse nation that we have,” said Lauridsen. “We feel that it is offensive to the core values that we have, its unconstitutional, it's illegal."

RELATED: California Attorney General Challenges Trump’s Immigration Orders

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Donald Trump defends the travel ban, saying it’s aim is to prevent terrorists from entering the United States.

The other students, named in the lawsuit, attend Stanford and UC Berkeley.