Iran International
The reported detention of two Iranian green card holders marks “a profound erosion of due process,” international human rights lawyer Gissou Nia told Iran International, saying it represents a growing threat to lawful residents.
“Lawful permanent residence was always considered secure — almost unassailable,” Nia said. “To see people who have lived and worked here for years suddenly detained or deported with little to no process is alarming. ICE appears to be acting unlawfully in many of these cases, without proper judicial oversight."
US media reported this week that two Iranian green card holders were arrested in recent months by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in cases apparently involving minor crimes.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has stepped up efforts to detain and deport some green card holders citing past crimes or political activity at odds with its values. Most of the cases are being contested in courts.
Under US immigration law, green-card holders can only be deported in limited circumstances, such as when they commit certain crimes, falsify immigration documents, or remain outside the country for extended periods.
Nia said what is happening now goes far exceeds those bounds.
“Deporting Iranians who fled repression — or sending them to third countries like Sudan, Rwanda or Somalia — violates both international law and America’s own treaty obligations,” she said.
“This normalization of lawlessness should concern every American.”
In Los Angeles, NBC News reported that Sharareh Moghaddam, a small-business owner who had already passed her citizenship exam, was detained after attending what she thought was a routine immigration appointment. Her husband, Hooshang Aghdassi, said she had entered the country legally and had no record of wrongdoing.
“She had green card and passed exam for citizenship and was waiting for the ceremony,” Aghdassi told NBC. “She is not a bank robber or thief or criminal.”
ICE rejected that account, telling NBC Los Angeles in a written statement that reports claiming Moghaddam had no criminal history were “completely FALSE.” The agency described her as “an Iranian native and citizen with a documented criminal history dating back to 2015,” citing two theft convictions between 2015 and 2019, and concluded that she was “subject to removal under US immigration law.”
Newseek reported last month Reza Zavvar, a 52-year-old green card holder in Maryland who has lived in the United States for four decades, was detained for seventy-seven days by ICE in a case related to a marijuana charge in the nineties.
Zavvar, who first came to the country as a child, described his treatment as “unnecessary, inhumane, corrupt.”
“Saying that you can stay here as long as you don’t get in trouble, that you stay clean and just stay here, work, pay taxes — and that’s what I was doing,” Zavvar told the news outlet.
Iranians sent back from US without consent, lawyer says
More recently, 120 Iranians — including political dissidents and Christian converts — were deported to Tehran.
This comes after The New York Times reported that the operation followed “months of negotiations” between Washington and Iranian officials, and that the deportees were flown aboard US-chartered aircraft that left from a military airport in Louisiana, stopped in Puerto Rico to collect more passengers, and continued to Doha before their transfer to Iran.
Immigration attorney Ali Herischi, of Herischi & Associates in Maryland, told Iran International that two of his clients were among those deported against their will. “Their belongings — including their files, evidence and cell phones — have been handed to Iranian authorities. That’s very dangerous,” Herischi said.
He added that some detainees were given a stark choice: “ICE would say, ‘either you consent to deportation to Iran, or we send you to Somalia or Sudan.’ It was, ‘pick your poison.’ In the case of my clients, they didn’t even get that. They just said, ‘you’re done, let’s go.’”
Another Iranian national, Erfan Qaneifard, a political activist and writer, has been held for six months at the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas.
His lawyer, Masoud Peyma, told Iran International that ICE contacted Iran’s Interests Section in Washington seeking travel papers to deport him. “The risk is real. If he is sent back, his life will be in danger,” Peyma said. “There is no reason for him to remain in detention after six months.”
For Nia, these cases expose a broader collapse of process and accountability within the immigration system.
“It’s the normalization of a lack of process — the idea that even a green card, or eventually citizenship, could become conditional on political speech,” she said. “That’s authoritarianism creeping into the system.”
Civil-rights groups echoed those concerns, warning that forced returns could endanger vulnerable Iranians.
“Asylum seekers now face the possibility of being returned to a country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution,” the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, Pars Equality Center, and the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans said in a joint statement.
“This runs against core American values as a nation based on hope, freedom, and liberty that has long welcomed people facing oppression who, in turn, have contributed mightily to America," the statement read.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Iran International requests for comment on these cases.
