Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian lived in the United States for 47 years, married an American citizen and raised their daughter. She was gardening in the garden of her house in New Orleans when the American immigration and customs enforcement officials handcuffs and her fell away, her family said.
Kashanian arrived at a student visa in 1978 and applied for asylum, for fear of retaliation for her father's support to the Shah supported by the US. She lost her bid, but she was allowed to stay with her husband and child when she regularly checked in with immigration officials, her husband and daughter said. She indicated, once checked in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina. She is now being held in an immigration -detention center in Basile, Louisiana, while her family tries to get information.
Other Iranians are also arrested in the United States after decades by immigration authorities. The US Department of Interior Security will not say how many people they have arrested, but American military strikes on Iran have fueled the fear that more will come.
“A certain degree of vigilance is of course logical, but what it seems like Ice has done is in fact giving an order to collect as many Iranians as you can, or they are linked to a threat and then arrest them and they deport them and they deport, which is very caring,” said Ryan Costello, a lawyer group.
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an e -mail to ask for comments about Kashanian's case, but have recommended arrests of Iranians. The Department announced the arrests of at least 11 Iranians about immigration violations during the weekend of the American rocket attacks. The American customs and border protection said, without working out that it arrested seven Iranians at an address in Los Angeles area that “has been used repeatedly to cherish illegal participants in terrorism.”
The Department “has been full of gas on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists who entered this country illegally came in via the fraudulent conditional programs of Biden or otherwise,” said spokeswoman McLaughlin about the 11 arrests. She offered no proof of terrorist or extremist ties. Her commentary on conditional release programs referred to the extensive legal paths to access by President Joe Biden, who stopped his successor, Donald Trump.
Russell Milne, Kashanian's husband, said his wife is not a threat. Her appeal to asylum was complicated because of “events in her early life,” he explained. A court found an earlier marriage of her fraudulent.
But for four decades, Kashanian, 64, built up a life in Louisiana. The couple met when she was a student of a student in the late eighties. They got married and had a daughter. She registered with Habitat for Humanity, filmed Persian cooking tutorials on YouTube and was a grandmother for the adjacent children.
The fear of deportation was always about the family, Milne said, but he said his wife did everything that was asked of her.
“She meets her obligations,” said Milne. “She is retirement age. She is not a threat. Who takes a grandmother?”
Although Iranians have been crossing the border illegally for years, especially since 2021, they have had little risk with deported to their home country due to severed diplomatic relations with the US that no longer seems to be the case.
The Trump government has deported hundreds of people, including Iranians, to countries other than those of them in an attempt to bypass diplomatic obstacles with governments that do not take back their people. During Trump's second term, countries such as El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama have not taken back citizens from the US
The administration has asked the Supreme Court to erase the way for various deportations to South Sudan, a country destroyed by war that has no ties after the judges have allowed deportations to be to countries other than those non-citizens.
The American border patrol arrested Iranians 1,700 times at the Mexican border from October 2021 to November 2024, according to the most recent available public data. The Homeland Security department reported that around 600 Iranians Visa had too long as a company or visitors, tourists and students in the period from 12 months to September 2023, the most recent data reports.
Iran was one of the 12 countries subject to an American travel ban that came into force this month. Some fear that the growing deportation arrests of ice will be another blow.
In Oregon, an Iranian man was held last week by immigration means while driving to the gym. He was picked up for about two weeks before he was planned for a check-in at ICE offices in Portland, according to judicial documents submitted by his lawyer, Michael Purcell.
The man, identified in judicial files such as SF, has been living in the US and his wife and two children are American citizens for more than 20 years.
SF applied for an asylum in the US in the early 2000s, but his application was refused in 2002. His appeal failed, but the government did not deport him and according to the court documents he continued to live in the country for decades.
Due to “changed circumstances” in Iran, SF would be confronted with “a hugely increased danger of prosecution” if he were deported, Purcell wrote in his petition. “These circumstances relate to the recent bombing by the United States of Iranian nuclear facilities, creating a de facto state of war between the United States and Iran.”
SF's long residence in the US, his conversion to Christianity and the fact that his wife and children are American citizens “increase the possibility of his imprisonment in Iran, or torture or execution,” he said.
Similarly, Kashanian's daughter said she is worried about what will happen to her mother.
“She tried to do everything well,” said Kaitlynn Milne.
