In 2025, Margarita Fedorova married her husband, Sami Younis, over Zoom from her home in San Jose. Instead of celebrating her marriage with a honeymoon, the UC Berkeley student embarked on a mission to safely and legally retrieve her husband from the Gaza Strip. Over a year after their marriage, her husband is still waiting.
Fedorova met Younis, a Palestinian national, in 2024 after the Oct. 7 attacks and ongoing regional escalation that followed. The two met over Instagram, and became engaged a couple months later.
“We video call all the time,” said Fedorova. “We communicate daily for hours, sometimes even falling asleep while on the call.”
Shortly after getting married, Fedorova got to work on filing the paperwork to get Younis an immigrant visa for a spouse of a U.S. citizen – a CR1 Visa.
However, Fedorova described a slow, complicated application process, and reached out to congressional leadership in her district – the offices of Rep. Jimmy Panetta – for assistance with Younis’ application.
“[It was] such a nightmare,” said Fedorova, “It’s not uncommon for other people dealing with immigration issues to reach out to their congressional representatives. It’s a federal issue.”
After office staff connected with Fedorova, Panetta sent three separate letters to the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter.
In the first letter to the U.S. Consulate, sent Aug. 4, 2025, Panetta asked for an “expedited review” of Younis’s application, given the humanitarian crisis and limited ability for civilians to safely exit Gaza due to conflict in the region.
Younis needed to reach the Jerusalem Embassy for his interview scheduled for December 2025.
At the time, it was unclear if any exit routes were available out of Gaza, notably the Rafah Border Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, leaving many Palestinians like Younis unable to leave Gaza to complete visa processing.
In the letter to Rubio sent Oct. 20, 2025, Panetta – alongside four other members of congress – requested that the secretary of state use “all diplomatic and operational tools” to assist Palestinians who are seeking visa services and unable to leave under the fragile ceasefire conditions.
“The absence of a meaningful and viable process for obtaining visa interviews is undermining the integrity of our visa system,” said Panetta in the letter, “And inflicting further hardship on people who are otherwise following lawful procedures.”
Fedorova tried contacting the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help facilitating her husband’s exit, but the embassy refused.
“I’ve contacted them [the Jerusalem Embassy] several times,” said Fedorova. “I’ve called their number, I’ve emailed them, I’ve called their emergency line, and they were like ‘oh he’s a spouse, he’s not a U.S citizen,’ so they’re not going to do it.”
According to Panetta’s final letter to Leiter sent on Nov. 24, 2025, there was “little progress” in arranging Younis’s exit with the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the unit in the Israeli Ministry of Defense that oversees civilian policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Younis was ultimately not given permission to exit Gaza, preventing him from attending his scheduled interview in Jerusalem.
Unwilling to give up, Fedorova authorized her caseworkers at Panetta’s offices to transfer her husband’s rescheduled interview to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, after meeting Panetta in San Jose. The interview is scheduled for this Wednesday, Oct. 21.
The Rafah Border Crossing reopened in March of this year, and remains open for limited movement according to the European Union.
Although an exit route is now available for Younis, Fedorova remains unsure if her husband will be allowed to use the Rafah Border Crossing to reach the Cairo Embassy, and has coordinated with her professors in the event that she must leave to assist her husband.
Fedorova also worries her husband may not be allowed entry into the U.S. due to President Trump’s Presidential Proclamation 10998, which suspends or limits visa issuance to foreign nationals of 39 countries, including applicants using travel documents “endorsed by the Palestinian Authority.”
Despite more than a year of back-and-forth with Panetta’s offices, caseworkers, and embassies, Fedorova still feels empowered by her husband as they maneuver the vicissitudes of American immigration policy and conflicts abroad through their daily phone calls.