Young woman who rallied for liberties in Iran is now 'looking for freedom' from ICE detention

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Melika Mohammadi Gazvar Olya fled Tehran after participating in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests following the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in custody. After a dangerous journey across Central America, she was detained upon arrival in the US. The young Iranian asylum-seeker has been incarcerated for nearly three years in an ICE detention center near the Mexican border.


Issued on: 28/09/2025 - 
FRANCE24
By: Mehdi BOUZOUINA

Melika Mohammadi Gazvar Olya before her arrest in the US. © Handout

In the fall of 2022, Melika Mohammadi Gazvar Olya, like hundreds of young Iranian women, took to the streets of Tehran to protest against the Islamic regime’s mandatory hijab laws.

The September 16, 2022, death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a student who was arrested for “inappropriate clothing”, had sparked the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests across the country that were rattling the regime.

Melika, like many of the young women protesters, marched bareheaded and posted images of her defiance on social media. It was her way of demonstrating her dissent.

Mahsa Amini and Iran's 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement win Sakharov human rights prize

When the crackdown came, it was sweeping and brutal. Fearing for the safety of her mother and two younger sisters, Melika, then just 20, and her father made the difficult decision to flee. They left Iran for Turkey, took a flight to Nicaragua and then made their way to the United States.

‘I felt like my world was falling apart’

For Melika and her father, it meant weeks of walking and taking bus rides through Central America, an arduous trek made hazardous by extortionate smugglers, criminal gangs and corrupt local officials that has led Amnesty International to call the migrant route “the Most Dangerous Journey”.

On the road, Melika witnessed physical and sexual abuse. Far from the comfort of home, the young Iranian woman lived with the constant fear of danger while grappling with the unfamiliarity of a different culture, language and landscapes of the places she passed. “It’s hard when you are on the road – you don’t have your place, your bed, your food – everything was different,” she told FRANCE 24.

At the end of January 2023, Melika and her father finally reached Ciudad Juarez, a teeming Mexican city on the US-Mexico border considered the last stop on the migrant route to the USA. Like many refugees crossing the Rio Grande River separating Mexico and the US state of Texas, she surrendered to US border guards, hoping to quickly obtain asylum.

But it was the start of another ordeal, one she hadn’t expected. Immediately after her arrest, Melika exchanged her civilian clothes for a prison uniform.

The young woman, who wants to study medicine, saw her dreams shattered as soon as she realised she was being transferred to the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the infamous El Paso Service Processing Center (EPSPC), where a recent Amnesty International report documented “serious human rights violations”. It was a rude welcome to the land of free. “I felt like my world was falling apart,” she recalled.
Cell mates come and go

Melika had made it from Iran to the US, but her legal ordeal on American soil had just begun. At a Texas district court, an immigration judge ordered her deportation to Iran, even though her life was in danger in her homeland.

One day, after nearly 10 months in detention, Melika was escorted by ICE agents into a van with tinted windows and driven away. It was only when she stepped out onto the tarmac of El Paso airport that she realised what was happening. Nearly two years later, Melika remembers that fateful day with clarity. “In October 2023, ICE drove me away in a van – without telling me where we were going. Then I realised we were on an airport tarmac – and I started crying. An officer kindly told me I had the right to refuse the flight, and so I did," she recalled in an interview from detention with FRANCE 24.

Saved from boarding that flight out of the US, Melika has since been supported by the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center association, an El Paso-based NGO providing legal services to immigrants and advocating for their human rights.

Earlier this year, there was a second attempt to deport her. In March, Las Americas, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Texas A&M School of Law Civil Rights Clinic submitted a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, allowing detainees to challenge the legality of their confinement, to a Texas court.

As her case grinds through the courts, and advocacy groups exhaust every legal means at their disposal, Melika has been sharing a dormitory with around 70 fellow inmates. After more than two years and eight months, she has seen cell mates, mostly from Latin America, come and go, with many of them deported to their countries of origin within a few weeks.

Along the way, the now 23-year-old Iranian woman picked up Spanish, improved her English and is now fluent in both languages. “I make new friends all the time, I watch them leave as new ones arrive. And those ones end up leaving as well. I am wondering if I will ever find my freedom again,” she said.

Despite the legal, bureaucratic and political obstacles, Zoe Bowman, supervising attorney at Las Americas, is working doggedly to try to secure parole for Melika. "We are challenging her prolonged detention at a federal court level," said Bowman, noting the 2001 landmark Supreme Court ruling in the Zadvydas v. Davis case set the maximum “presumptively reasonable” period of detention after a deportation order at six months. It’s a threshold that has long been exceeded in Melika’s case.

US strikes Iran – and Iranians seeking asylum

Donald Trump's return to the White House has virtually closed America’s doors to asylum seekers. During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly slammed the Biden administration’s use of “catch and release”, which refers to the practice of releasing migrants and asylum seekers to the community while they await immigration hearings.

The subsequent build-up of detainees since “catch and release” was scrapped has sparked a rapid expansion of temporary migrant detention centers, including the new “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, which Trump inaugurated in July. Granting asylum, an already difficult process under the Biden administration, has become virtually non-existent under the second Trump presidency.

Melika’s unwavering optimism took another blow after the 12-day US-Israel war on Iran. For several days, as fighter jets rained down munitions on Iran, Melika had no news from her family back home. She quickly realised that Iranian refugees were now being targeted by US authorities. Tom Homan, the White House “border czar” appointed by Trump to head ICE, has publicly expressed concern about potential Iranian “sleeper cells", fueling the paranoia of the MAGA base.

“My father, who had been granted parole a few months ago, was picked up by ICE right after the strikes. He is now in another detention center in Arizona and I am having a very hard time getting news from him,” lamented Melika, who communicates with the outside world via messaging apps on her mobile, when it works in the detention center.

Shadows on the wall

Life at the El Paso processing center is tough with 5.30am military-like wakeup calls, rationed toilet paper, deplorable hygiene and limited medical care. In its May 14 report, Amnesty International expressed particular concern about the quality of the food, which is poorly balanced and sometimes even spoiled. “They always feed us some bread with peanut butter and chips,” said Melika.

After more than two years behind bars, the young Iranian woman has become a point of reference for new arrivals, guiding and supporting them in an oppressive environment.

Former inmates who shared Melika’s detention cell remember the young Iranian woman as a beacon of hope, providing some humanity as she maintained a semblance of dignity in an inhospitable space where overcrowding, lack of privacy, deprivations and constant noise are part of everyday life.

“Some days we would cast our shadows against the wall, posing as if we were doing a photo shoot. Without a phone, we pretended to take pictures. It was our way of passing the time. We danced and drew a lot,” recalled her former cellmate Edgarlys Castaneda-Rodriguez. A Venezuelan asylum seeker, Castaneda-Rodriguez spent several “traumatic” weeks in the same dormitory as Melika before being granted conditional release. She now lives in New York and has to wear an electronic ankle bracelet.

Castaneda-Rodriguez reveals that a fellow inmate even attempted to take her own life a few weeks ago in the cell she shared with her Iranian friend.

Three years after Amini's death, Melika remains stuck in El Paso with no certainty about the outcome of her asylum application. She tries to remain hopeful: “I took a road I didn't know, and went to a place I never had any plans to go to,” she said. “I am still here, all this time, and I’m still looking for freedom.”

This article has been translated from the original in French.