A Canadian student says he might lose credit for this academic year after American officials confiscated his laptop computer, which contained all his work, when he attempted to enter the United States last week, according to The Chronicle Journal, a newspaper in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The student, Mahmoud Zeitoun, an engineering major and president of the Muslim Student Association at Lakehead University, says he was detained for 12 hours at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport en route to Denver with his dentist and her assistant. Mr. Zeitoun, who was born in Lebanon but has Canadian citizenship, was to play the part of the dentist’s patient in a professional examination that would qualify her to practice in the United States. He said that he was interrogated during his 12-hour detention about whether he had ties to the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, among other questions.

Last year the United States government introduced new policies to make foreign visitors, including students and visiting academics, more welcome. But some foreign scholars, invited to visit American campuses, have received rebuffs, not welcomes, from U.S. authorities.