Iranian researcher, others head to US as travel ban eases
MILAN — Iranian bioengineer Nima Enayati saw for himself what a difference a few days can make.
Enayati was prevented from boarding a Turkish Airlines flight to the United States on Monday after President Donald Trump’s travel ban against seven Muslim nations took effect. The move threw into disarray his plans to conduct research at Stanford University’s CHARMLAB on robotic surgery, part of his PhD. studies at Milan’s Polytechnic University.
On Saturday, as soon as he heard that a court had blocked Trump’s travel ban, Enayati started calling every airline he could, looking for the quickest, most direct flight to anywhere in the United States.
A day later, just hours after a U.S. appeals court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to re-impose the travel ban, the 29-year-old checked in Sunday for an Emirates Airline flight direct from Milan’s Malpensa airport to New York’s JFK.