ein A. Zammar ’29 calls his parents once a day, everyday, for at least thirty minutes. He never skips one, because those calls are the only contact with them he’s guaranteed to have.

Zammar’s native country, Syria, has been placed on a U.S. travel ban list that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2026. Under the restrictions, Zammar’s Syrian passport would prevent him from re-entering the United States if he were to leave. To continue his studies at Harvard, Zammar cannot return home.

Zammar hails from Aleppo, one of Syria’s most populous cities and a major industrial center. In high school, he participated in the International Olympiad in Informatics, excelling in both the competition and the classroom. Alongside 47,893 other students from around the world, he applied to Harvard.

Like many other international students, Zammar was caught in the crossfire of the Trump administration’s attempts to reshape U.S. higher education. Beginning last spring, the administration revoked thousands of international student visas, often citing criminal records — though many of those revocations were later reversed. The administration has also encouraged universities to cap international enrollment. According to the State Department, more than 8,000 student visas have been revoked as of January. At the same time, Harvard drew scrutiny after refusing to comply with a sweeping set of proposed internal policy changes.

Zammar wasn’t blind to this. After his acceptance, he remembers hearing rumors about Trump’s plans to ban international students from travelling to the United States. Nonetheless, he pressed on. Zammar obtained his visa, the official document that enabled him to enter the U.S. and attend Harvard, on May 22, 2025.

It was just in time.

Later that day, the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification — a move that would have barred international students from enrolling. Two weeks later, President Trump issued Proclamation 10948, which sought to halt the issuance of new visas and potentially revoke existing ones, including Zammar’s.

Neither the DHS’s nor President Trump’s attempts held up in court; both were halted in a matter of days. The unpredictability, though, left an impact. As the days ticked down toward his flight to the U.S., Zammar avoided discussing the subject of his looming travel plans with his family, worried about the distress it would cause. Nonetheless, he remained hopeful. “I had a lot of trust in Harvard that they were gonna figure it out,” he recalls. “They could have just as well waitlisted us, but they didn’t do that,” he adds. “They do care about the students they want to be here.”

Zammar arrived on campus in August and completed his first fall semester without further unrest, albeit with some unease. At home, conversations between Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president of Syria, and President Trump hinted at improvements between the two countries, including a suspension of U.S. economic sanctions announced last November. Zammar was optimistic, but remained wary. “I wasn’t planning to go back during the winter break, because I knew it was dangerous. This can happen anytime, right?”

His caution paid off. In spite of apparent diplomatic progress, on Dec. 16, 2025, President Trump added Syria to its list of countries under a full travel ban. That meant if Zammar was to leave the U.S., as he intended to do in the summer, he could no longer re-enter.

This situation is not new for his family. In 2016, Zammar’s older brother left Syria to study in Germany. Because of travel restrictions tied to the Assad regime, he would not return home for nearly a decade.

“His concept of me is very different from who I am because I’m just growing up very, very far away,” he says of his brother. “Yeah, we’re brothers, we love each other and everything, but we can’'t relate to each other anymore.”

Last summer — just before Zammar left for the U.S. . — the family was reunited for the first time.

For a moment, Zammar recalls, it was “beautiful.” It was also fleeting.

It is now February, and little has changed. There has been no indication that the travel ban will be lifted. Zammar isn’t sure when — or if — it will be. Away from his home and family, he won’t jeopardize his education in the U.S. The cost is distance, physical and emotional: from his parents, from his brother, from his country and from his culture. Although he stays in touch with his family, he knows inevitably that being away from home will lead to a divergence in their lives – just like it did for his brother.

“Their interactions with the world, my interactions with the world, we’re both changing, but we’re far from each other,” he adds. “A 30 minute call every day will not give them a complete sense of the person you are.”

—Magazine writer Wyatt J. Meyer can be reached at [email protected].