Arabic teacher at Clemson faces immigration charge

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04:04 PM EDT on Wednesday, July 22, 2009

By SUSANNE M. SCHAFER






COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Federal immigration officials are holding a woman from Syria who taught Arabic at Clemson University for violating immigration law, and her husband says he is fighting to allow her to stay with him in America.

"If we made an honest mistake in the paperwork, we want to fix it," Taiyo Davis said in a telephone interview. "We want to do this legally."

Davis, 32, a graduate student in history at Clemson, said his wife Tharwat Alasadi, 29, was taken from their apartment Monday in handcuffs.

Davis, who said he was born in Japan but is an American citizen, said his wife had been in the country about two years on a Fulbright program that required her to return to Syria when her visa expired in May.

They married in January and in March, they applied for a waiver to allow her to remain in the United States. The Syrian government sent them a letter that said it did not object to her remaining in the United States, Davis said.

He said he was meeting with an attorney to determine what to do next, and that it was possible his wife might be released on bond.

A spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Wednesday that Alasadi's arrest was part of an ongoing investigation.

"She was found to be in violation of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. I cannot comment further because the case is part of an ongoing investigation," said ICE spokesman Ivan Ortiz.

Ortiz said Alasadi was taken to the Mecklenburg County jail in Charlotte, N.C.

David Grigsby, vice provost for international affairs at Clemson, said Alasadi was a foreign language teaching assistant in Arabic who was in the country on a visa that required her to return to Syria for two years.

"She was at Clemson as a non-student language instructor. She was not a formal Clemson student," said Grigsby, adding that her program was organized through the Fulbright program and the Institute of International Education. A phone call to the Institute's spokesman was not immediately returned.

Grigsby said Clemson did not sponsor her visa. University officials met with her several times about her status, he added.

"We told her we couldn't extend her stay," Grigsby said.

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