Eh - I knew Arab students who couldn't get their visa renewed for some years after Sep 11. They were involved in antiwar protests, etc. The fact that the US put many of its own anti-war activists on no-fly lists despite not having any evidence they were threats makes this pretty easy to believe.
Happy ending here: he was admitted to the country a week later, on his second attempt, in time to start classes.
(I'm not making excuses for the---dire---state of our immigration policy as a whole. But I was happy to see that this particular case worked out in the end.)
