[5][4] Mustafa visited USA in the summer of 2013 on a U.S. State Department funded a six-week fellowship that took her to Washington D.C. and Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.

[5][4] In July 2013, while she was in USA, her father Ali Mustafa a prominent business person and political activist opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was abducted by the Shabiha.

[5][6][3] Meanwhile, her mother Lamia Zreik and two sisters fled Syria for Gaziantep, Turkey from where they also applied for asylum to USA.

[3][5] Mustafa moved into an apartment in Hudson Valley; her plans for her family to join her in the United States were thwarted by Donald Trump's refugee policies.

[5][3] She won a scholarship to study political science at Bard College and organized the conference From Surviving to Thriving: Syrian Refugees Speak.