'Are We At Risk?' Wave of ICE Arrests Strikes Fear in Iranian Communities

The Intercept

04-07-2025

The brief war between Israel, Iran, and the United States appears to be over for now. But for many Iranian immigrants to the United States, a new period of uncertainty is just beginning.
A wave of detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement has sparked fear in Iranian communities across the country, amid heightened international tensions spurred by President Trump's decision to join Israel's bombardment of Iran.
Among those recently detained are avowed foes of the current Iranian government, including Christian asylum-seekers, former protesters who fled repression, and aging immigrants who have called the U.S. their home for over 40 years, according to news reports, immigration advocates, and attorneys who spoke with The Intercept.
'What ICE has done is essentially look at the geopolitical situation and say, 'Okay, we need to go after Iranians''
More than 130 Iranian nationals have been arrested or detained in the three weeks since Israel launched its 12-day war with Iran on June 13. The Trump Administration has justified this sudden surge by invoking fears of 'sleeper cells' plotting attacks on behalf of the Islamic Republic, according to reporting by Fox News.
'We're seeing Iranians with varying immigration statuses, including green cards, being detained across the country,' said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. 'They're targeting folks who have followed the process, who have done what the government told them to do in navigating the immigration system.'
In the three-year period between October 2021 and November 2024, ICE arrested just 165 Iranian nationals, according to the most recent available statistics.
According to Fox News, the total number of Iranians in ICE custody stood at 670 late last month, including the 130 new detainees. Multiple advocates and attorneys who spoke with The Intercept said they expect that number has only increased in the past week. ICE did not respond to a request for comment, nor to a question about the number of Iranians currently in government detention.
The Department of Homeland Security last week trumpeted the arrest of 11 Iranian nationals whose only unifying factor was their shared national heritage. Some had criminal charges — decades old, in some cases — and others had irregularities in their immigration status that ICE claimed made them eligible for deportation. DHS claimed one of the detainees admitted having ties to Hezbollah, but the department did not elaborate on what those ties entailed.
The wave of arrests came as first Israel and later the United States carried out airstrikes on military and scientific targets linked to Iran's nuclear program. Israel also carried out targeted assassination strikes and car bombings in dense residential neighborhoods across Iran over the course of the conflict. Iran retaliated with ballistic missile attacks on Israel.
Though Fox News noted that the administration was conducting the raids in hopes of disrupting 'sleeper cells,' there has been no evidence to back up those claims. There was no indication from DHS and ICE that any of the detainees were picked up due to any actual intelligence on plots against the United States.
'What ICE has done is essentially look at the geopolitical situation and say, 'Okay, we need to go after Iranians,'' said Ryan Costello, policy director of the National Iranian American Council. 'And how they're doing that is essentially sorting by national origin and then looking for cases of individuals where there's some uncertainty on their status.'
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'It's basically 'The national heritage of Iranians means you're guilty of something, and we'll figure out what that is later,'' Costello said.
The detentions have kindled fear among Iranian immigrants and Iranian Americans that they could be next, according to Curtis Morrison, an attorney in California who works extensively with Iranian clients. Speaking with The Intercept on Tuesday afternoon, Morrison said he had just moments ago gotten off the phone with an Iranian client calling in a panic despite having been granted asylum.
'He's asking 'Are we at risk?' And I was like, 'Yes,'' Morrison said. 'It's a really awkward conversation to have.'
A number of the people recently detained by ICE had previously been released by ICE after passing a so-called 'credible fear' interview, a stage in the asylum application process in which immigration authorities assess the basis for a claim, according to Jonathan Aftalion, an attorney based in Los Angeles.
Aftalion said he has at least one client currently in detention who fears for his life if the Trump administration makes good on its intention to deport him back to Iran.
'This is a guy who is about to be sent back to a regime that is in turmoil, and he is very clearly a political dissident,' Aftalion said. 'If you're clearly a political dissident, and [the Iranian government] has knowledge of that — this is a very harsh regime, and you're essentially going back to your death.'
During the Biden administration, approximately 1,200 Iranian nationals were taken into immigration custody then released, according to Trump border czar Tom Homan. Many of those people could now face deportation. Now that Trump is ramping up attempts to send deportees to countries other than their nation of origin, their possible destinations are uncertain.
While the timing of the recent uptick in detentions coincides with U.S. tensions with Tehran, it comes after of years during which the U.S. government placed additional burdens on Iranians hoping to immigrate to the United States, according to Aftalion. Under the first Trump administration, and during the later part of the Biden administration, Iranians had to jump through extra hoops to enter the United States or to prove their credible-fear claims, Aftalion said.
'There has been a lot that the Iranian community has had to go through, and it didn't just start with Trump and the tensions between Israel, Iran, and the U.S.,' Aftalion said. 'Iranians have not been getting a fair shake for years now, and it's just been amplified at this time.'
For many, however, that amplification has been sudden, and severe.
In Louisiana, masked ICE agents arrived on the doorstep of Mandonna 'Donna' Kashanian, 64, and took her into custody. Kashanian came to the United States in 1978 and, despite losing an asylum claim, was given a stay of removal. She has lived here ever since and checked in regularly with immigration authorities, and she has a spouse and a daughter who are both U.S. citizens.
In Los Angeles, ICE called a family of Christian asylum-seekers in for a meeting, then took them into custody and transferred them to a detention center in Texas, ICE records show. The family's lawyer, Kaveh Aradalan, told NBC that he has another five clients seeking asylum who have been detained recently.
And in Buffalo, unidentified agents have been camping out near the home of an Iranian dissident, prompting neighbors to organize to protect the man against deportation, according to a report in the Investigative Post, a local news site. Speaking with the Investigative Post, the dissident, who was not named, said he feared being sent back to Iran after fleeing in the wake of protests that broke out in 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman arrested for failing to wear hijab.
'These are people who are seeking safety here,' said Awawdeh, of the New York Immigration Coalition. The Trump administration and ICE authorities 'are creating a stereotype, and then weaponizing that stereotype, and then targeting people because of that.'