UC Davis Protesters Say Trump's Travel Ban Harms Universities

A rally held at UC Davis Thursday highlighted a lower court's argument that Pres. Donald Trump's travel ban damages public universities.

After a three-judge panel ruled against the ban, the country is waiting to hear if Trump will appeal the case to the full Ninth Circuit Court or perhaps straight to the Supreme Court.

In the wake of the ruling, one of the main arguments made by attorneys bringing cases against the travel ban was that it significantly damages public universities, which have many international students.

Among the international students impacted is Hossein Karimi, a UC Davis graduate student from Iran. Karimi says that international students have made countless contributions to the U.S.

"There are academic papers published, I have three of them," Karimi says. "My friends in engineering, in chemistry, in physics...they are publishing things and forwarding science, which brings money to the United States."

Karimi says that his parents came to visit him last year, but now, with the looming threat of Trump's order, he must choose between visiting his family and his Ph.D., which he has been working on for years.

International students are not the only ones affected by the order. Banfsheh Sadeghi, an assistant professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine, says she left her parents and a good job in Iran because the U.S. embraces diverse people and ideas, unlike many other countries.

Two weeks ago, Sadeghi was abroad and heard about Trump's possible executive order. She says she had to make a quick decision on whether to go ahead with her plan to visit her elderly mother in Iran, or to try to get back home to her 11-year-old son before the executive order was issued. She ended up landing in San Francisco the day before the order came down.

"If the diversity and the chance of having people all over the world here is going to go away from our academics here, then I don't know what makes it different," Sadeghi says.