Iranians Arrested in Deportation Drive 06/30 06:13

   

   (AP) -- Mandonna "Donna" Kashanian lived in the United States for 47 years, 
married a U.S. citizen and raised their daughter. She was gardening in the yard 
of her New Orleans home when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers 
handcuffed and took her away, her family said.

   Kashanian arrived in 1978 on a student visa and applied for asylum, fearing 
retaliation for her father's support of the U.S.-backed shah. She lost her bid, 
but she was allowied to remain with her husband and child if she checked in 
regularly with immigration officials, her husband and daughter said. She 
complied, once checking in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina. She is 
now being held at an immigration detention center in Basile, Louisiana, while 
her family tries to get information.

   Other Iranians are also getting arrested by immigration authorities after 
decades in the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security won't 
say how many people they've arrested, but U.S. military strikes on Iran have 
fueled fears that there is more to come.

   "Some level of vigilance, of course, makes sense, but what it seems like ICE 
has done is basically give out an order to round up as many Iranians as you 
can, whether or not they're linked to any threat and then arrest them and 
deport them, which is very concerning," said Ryan Costello, policy director of 
the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group.

   Homeland Security did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on 
Kashanian's case but have been touting arrests of Iranians. The department 
announced the arrests of at least 11 Iranians on immigration violations during 
the weekend of the U.S. missile strikes. U.S. Customs and Border Protection 
said, without elaborating, that it arrested seven Iranians at a Los 
Angeles-area address that "has been repeatedly used to harbor illegal entrants 
linked to terrorism."

   The department "has been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or 
suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this 
country, came in through Biden's fraudulent parole programs or otherwise," 
spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said of the 11 arrests. She didn't offer any 
evidence of terrorist or extremist ties. Her comment on parole programs 
referred to President Joe Biden's expanded legal pathways to entry, which his 
successor, Donald Trump, shut down.

   Russell Milne, Kashanian's husband, said his wife is not a threat. Her 
appeal for asylum was complicated because of "events in her early life," he 
explained. A court found an earlier marriage of hers to be fraudulent.

   But over four decades, Kashanian, 64, built a life in Louisiana. The couple 
met when she was bartending as a student in the late 1980s. They married and 
had a daughter. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, filmed Persian 
cooking tutorials on YouTube and was a grandmother figure to the children next 
door.

   The fear of deportation always hung over the family, Milne said, but he said 
his wife did everything that was being asked of her.

   "She's meeting her obligations," Milne said. "She's retirement age. She's 
not a threat. Who picks up a grandmother?"

   While Iranians have been crossing the border illegally for years, especially 
since 2021, they have faced little risk of being deported to their home 
countries due to severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. That seems to no 
longer be the case.

   The Trump administration has deported hundreds of people, including 
Iranians, to countries other than their own in an attempt to circumvent 
diplomatic hurdles with governments that won't take their people back. During 
Trump's second term, countries including El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama 
have taken back noncitizens from the U.S.

   The administration has asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for several 
deportations to South Sudan, a war-ravaged country with which it has no ties, 
after the justices allowed deportations to countries other than those 
noncitizens came from.

   The U.S. Border Patrol arrested Iranians 1,700 times at the Mexican border 
from October 2021 through November 2024, according to the most recent public 
data available. The Homeland Security Department reported that about 600 
Iranians overstayed visas as business or exchange visitors, tourists and 
students in the 12-month period through September 2023, the most recent data 
reports.

   Iran was one of 12 countries subject to a U.S. travel ban that took effect 
this month. Some fear ICE's growing deportation arrests will be another blow.

   In Oregon, an Iranian man was detained by immigration agents this past week 
while driving to the gym. He was picked up roughly two weeks before he was 
scheduled for a check-in at ICE offices in Portland, according to court 
documents filed by his attorney, Michael Purcell.

   The man, identified in court filings as S.F., has lived in the U.S. for over 
20 years, and his wife and two children are U.S. citizens.

   S.F. applied for asylum in the U.S. in the early 2000s, but his application 
was denied in 2002. His appeal failed but the government did not deport him and 
he continued to live in the country for decades, according to court documents.

   Due to "changed conditions" in Iran, S.F. would face "a vastly increased 
danger of persecution" if he were to be deported, Purcell wrote in his 
petition. "These circumstances relate to the recent bombing by the United 
States of Iranian nuclear facilities, thus creating a de facto state of war 
between the United States and Iran."

   S.F.'s long residency in the U.S., his conversion to Christianity and the 
fact that his wife and children are U.S. citizens "sharply increase the 
possibility of his imprisonment in Iran, or torture or execution," he said.

   Similarly, Kashanian's daughter said she is worried what will happen to her 
mother.

   "She tried to do everything right," Kaitlynn Milne said.