No criminals here! The Gestapo ICE thugs bust two law-abiding Ph.D. students, exactly the sort of people we want in our country.
The couple, immigrants from Iran studying at Louisiana State University, led the officers to their apartment’s parking lot. Then, without knowing why, their lawyers say, the two were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
After nearly a month in custody and two petitions challenging their detainment, a magistrate judge this week ordered that Firouzabadi, 30, and Pourhosseinhendabad, 29, be released and that all removal proceedings against them be dismissed. Norah Ahmed, one of their attorneys and legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Louisiana, said the case illustrates the risks immigrants face in their everyday lives under President Donald Trump’s push to increase deportations.
“There is a broader narrative out there that somehow the mass deportation efforts underway are somehow related to ‘criminals,’ right?” Ahmed said. “The reality is you’re taking two PhD students at LSU. … You’re taking in our friends, family, neighbors and loved ones — these are the people in these immigration jails.”
In certain cases, ICE officers can legally employ ruses, or deceptive tactics, to access private property. Officers could legally pretend to be from another agency and say they are investigating another crime to be allowed inside someone’s home, but they cannot misrepresent themselves as a probation officer or as a member of a health or safety organization. They also cannot coerce people through threats and intimidation, according to internal ICE memos. Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment.
Ahmed said ICE’s tactics mean immigrants need to be less trusting of apparent officers showing up at their door.
“And that’s very sad,” she continued, “because it means that, as opposed to people feeling comfortable with law enforcement and state actors and contributing to make their communities better and safer, we are now encouraging people to, in fact, shut down.”
After their arrests, the two were held briefly in Baton Rouge and in Mississippi’s Hancock County before they were separated: Firouzabadi was moved to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center and Pourhosseinhendabad to Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, where they remained for several weeks.
The charges centered on their visa statuses after they were enrolled as students at LSU. The two arrived in the United States in 2023, when Firouzabadi, then 28, was accepted into a graduate program at LSU and granted an international student visa known as an F-1, according to court documents. Pourhosseinhendabad initially came to the U.S. on an F-2 visa, meant for spouses of international students, but was granted an F-1 visa earlier this year after he was accepted into LSU’s PhD program in mechanical engineering, according to court documents.
The U.S. revoked Firouzabadi’s visa in late September 2024, and when she was notified roughly a week later, school officials told her that her studies would remain unaffected, though she could not leave and re-enter the country, according to court documents. Both she and her husband applied for asylum; their application is still pending.
Firouzabadi was not initially given a reason for the revocation of her visa, but a week after she was arrested, her charging document said it was revoked because she had been suspected of espionage or sabotage against the U.S., according to Firouzabadi’s habeas corpus petition, which is a legal process to challenge a person’s detention. ICE then rescinded that allegation 10 days later, the petition says, to reflect that she was just being charged for overstaying her visa. Her husband’s charging document, known as a notice to appear, says he was arrested over losing his F-2 status in late 2023 — even though he had since obtained an F-1 visa, according to his habeas corpus petition.
Her lawyers argued that she was in the U.S. legally as she was still an active student and an employee of LSU on the date of her arrest. They also argued that the couple were unlawfully detained, as the government’s purpose for detention is solely to protect against danger and flight risk.
“Parisa’s detention — which occurred on the heels of the United States’ bombing of Iran and as part of a concerted, public effort by the Executive Branch to round up suspected Iranian terrorists — is unlawful, as it appears based solely on her Iranian nationality,” the petition says.
The two were among several Iranian immigrants arrested or detained in the days after the U.S. launched military strikes against Iran on June 21. Another Iranian woman from Louisiana, a 64-year-old grandmother named Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian who had been in the U.S. for nearly 50 years, was detained the same day Firouzabadi and Pourhosseinhendabad were taken into custody.
The DHS said the arrests reflected its “commitment to keeping known and suspected terrorists out of American communities,” and it issued a news release on June 24 identifying 11 Iranian men it had arrested. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the department had “been full throttle on identifying and arresting known or suspected terrorists and violent extremists that illegally entered this country.”
Ahmed, the attorney, likened the arrests to the country’s internment camps during World War II, when the federal government rounded up and incarcerated citizens and residents of Japanese descent, justifying it by claiming they posed a security threat while the U.S. was at war with Japan.
“That it could be happening in 2025 is shocking, and it’s beyond deeply troubling,” she said.
