The attorneys for a 24-year-old Iranian national and Northeastern University student said their client was deported late Monday in spite of a federal court order.
Olivia Messer, The Daily Beast•January 21, 2020
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The attorneys for a 24-year-old Iranian national and Northeastern University student who inspired protests at Boston Logan International Airport over the weekend said their client was deported late Monday in spite of a federal court order.
Shahab Dehghani was detained Sunday night at about 5 p.m. when he arrived to study economics at the private school on a valid F1 student visa. He was held for secondary questioning by federal agents, and more than 100 people reportedly came out to demonstrate on his behalf outside of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) area of the airport for at least three hours on Monday. Protesters chanted “let Shahab in,” “do the right thing,” “stop deporting students,” and “let him in!”
Dehghani was ordered removed from the U.S. without his having access to a lawyer, WBUR reported, but his attorneys, Susan Church and Kerry Doyle, filed an emergency federal petition on his behalf Monday night. The filing claimed CBP agents violated Dehghani’s rights when they detained him at the airport in the first place.
U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs granted the order, scheduled a hearing in Boston federal court at 10 a.m. on Tuesday to discuss the matter, and appeared to delay Dehghani’s removal.
“It is not a total victory. It is a partial victory,” Church told a crowd of protesters on Monday night, according to MassLive.com.
Despite that order, Church said on Twitter Tuesday morning that Shahab Dehghani was “removed from the U.S. at 10:03 p.m.” Monday after agents told “multiple attorneys” that he was taken off the plane about 30 minutes earlier.
Church tweeted on Tuesday morning: “THEY LIED.”
A CBP spokesperson said in a statement that the agency could not confirm or deny that Dehghani was even in custody, citing the Privacy Act.
“Applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the U.S. by overcoming all grounds of inadmissibility including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds,” the statement said.
Judge Richard G. Stearns reportedly dismissed the case during a Tuesday morning hearing, declaring the issue moot—since Dehghani had already been deported—and noting that he did not believe he had the authority to order CBP to allow for the student’s return, according to WBUR.
During the 10 a.m. hearing in Boston federal court, CBP attorneys also disputed the timeline presented by Dehghani’s attorneys, one of whom said Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey received confirmation that the emergency stay order was granted before the flight took off, WBUR reported. In court, the agency’s attorneys reportedly claimed that Dehghani’s plane left before the order was issued.
“We are aware that a Northeastern University student who is an Iranian citizen has been denied entry to the United States,” school spokeswoman Shannon Nargi said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Northeastern welcomes thousands of international students and supports them with an array of resources. We have been in touch with federal officials to learn more about this case and to provide our student with the appropriate assistance to facilitate a successful return to Northeastern.”
Dehghani previously attended University of Massachusetts Boston and was in the country for more than two years before he returned to Iran to visit family in December 2018, MassLive.com reported.
Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren recently requested more information from CBP about additional security measures that may target Iranian travelers entering the country. The Guardian reported that the U.S. has deported at least 10 Iranian students with valid visas since August—despite the lengthy and intense approval process it takes to acquire that paperwork. Seven of those students had reportedly flown into Logan International Airport in Boston, and some now allege serious infractions by an individual CBP officer at the Boston airport, the newspaper reported.
The attorneys for a 24-year-old Iranian national and Northeastern University student who inspired protests at Boston Logan International Airport over the weekend said their client was deported late Monday in spite of a federal court order.
Shahab Dehghani was detained Sunday night at about 5 p.m. when he arrived to study economics at the private school on a valid F1 student visa. He was held for secondary questioning by federal agents, and more than 100 people reportedly came out to demonstrate on his behalf outside of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) area of the airport for at least three hours on Monday. Protesters chanted “let Shahab in,” “do the right thing,” “stop deporting students,” and “let him in!”
Dehghani was ordered removed from the U.S. without his having access to a lawyer, WBUR reported, but his attorneys, Susan Church and Kerry Doyle, filed an emergency federal petition on his behalf Monday night. The filing claimed CBP agents violated Dehghani’s rights when they detained him at the airport in the first place.
U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs granted the order, scheduled a hearing in Boston federal court at 10 a.m. on Tuesday to discuss the matter, and appeared to delay Dehghani’s removal.
“It is not a total victory. It is a partial victory,” Church told a crowd of protesters on Monday night, according to MassLive.com.
Despite that order, Church said on Twitter Tuesday morning that Shahab Dehghani was “removed from the U.S. at 10:03 p.m.” Monday after agents told “multiple attorneys” that he was taken off the plane about 30 minutes earlier.
Church tweeted on Tuesday morning: “THEY LIED.”
A CBP spokesperson said in a statement that the agency could not confirm or deny that Dehghani was even in custody, citing the Privacy Act.
“Applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the U.S. by overcoming all grounds of inadmissibility including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds,” the statement said.
Judge Richard G. Stearns reportedly dismissed the case during a Tuesday morning hearing, declaring the issue moot—since Dehghani had already been deported—and noting that he did not believe he had the authority to order CBP to allow for the student’s return, according to WBUR.
During the 10 a.m. hearing in Boston federal court, CBP attorneys also disputed the timeline presented by Dehghani’s attorneys, one of whom said Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey received confirmation that the emergency stay order was granted before the flight took off, WBUR reported. In court, the agency’s attorneys reportedly claimed that Dehghani’s plane left before the order was issued.
“We are aware that a Northeastern University student who is an Iranian citizen has been denied entry to the United States,” school spokeswoman Shannon Nargi said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Northeastern welcomes thousands of international students and supports them with an array of resources. We have been in touch with federal officials to learn more about this case and to provide our student with the appropriate assistance to facilitate a successful return to Northeastern.”
Dehghani previously attended University of Massachusetts Boston and was in the country for more than two years before he returned to Iran to visit family in December 2018, MassLive.com reported.
Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren recently requested more information from CBP about additional security measures that may target Iranian travelers entering the country. The Guardian reported that the U.S. has deported at least 10 Iranian students with valid visas since August—despite the lengthy and intense approval process it takes to acquire that paperwork. Seven of those students had reportedly flown into Logan International Airport in Boston, and some now allege serious infractions by an individual CBP officer at the Boston airport, the newspaper reported.
Iranian student with valid visa facing deportation from US ‘without explanation’
Lawyers allege attempted removal ‘a result of additional scrutiny targeting Iranians’
Andy Gregory
Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein was detained upon his return to the US despite having a valid student visa
An Iranian student with a valid visa to study in the US was detained without explanation or direct access to legal counsel and threatened with imminent deportation as the country celebrated Martin Luther King Day, his lawyers said.
More than 50 protesters gathered at Logan Airport in Massachusetts, where Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein was arrested by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and was due to be deported at 6:30pm local time on Monday.
The 24-year-old economics student’s lawyers filed an emergency petition to block his forced removal and allow him to finish his studies at Northeastern University. The document was seen by The Independent.
His deportation was delayed and his hearing will take place on Tuesday morning at Boston’s federal court.
After two years studying in the US, Mr Dehghani is believed to have been visiting family in Iran, an act that has been made more complex by Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim travel ban.
While the number of F1 (student) visas granted to those from the affected countries has significantly dropped since the ban’s introduction, these visas can offer only one entry to the US, meaning many students have been forced to stay in the country for the entire duration of their studies, with their families banned from visiting them.
Mr Dehghani attended the University of Massachusetts Boston before transferring to Northeastern, at which point he reapplied for a visa, which took nearly a year before he received it last week, Mass Live reported one of his lawyers, Susan Church, as saying.
“He went through an extensive processing period before he came back, which means that overseas investigators research his family, they speak to employers, they do a very thorough investigation,” Ms Church, told The Boston Globe.
CBP officials refused to provide a reason for his detention and did not allow direct communication with his lawyers, the emergency petition stated.
His detention came after the Trump-ordered strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani brought tensions between the two nations to boiling point, casting doubt over America’s immediate role in the region and the future of the 2015 nuclear pact.
Rather than being based in “legitimate concerns” over his admissibility to the US, his attempted removal was “a result of additional scrutiny targeting Iranians”, his lawyers alleged.
Legal experts said Mr Dehghani’s was far from an isolated case.
“This is but one of many Iranian students “deported” by CBP Logan since August 2019,” said Mahsa Khanbabai, chair of New England’s American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Legitimate students, vetted thoroughly by many agencies, granted visas, and then treated like this by CBP with no explanation.”
Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren also weighed in on Mr Dehghani’s case, writing on Twitter: “His deportation must be halted, and we must fight the Trump administration's xenophobic policies.”
“Given the Trump administration’s xenophobic policies and Logan Airport’s troubling practice of sending students back to Iran, we are deeply concerned that Shahab was detained,” said the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts executive director Carol Rose, adding that the organisation was assisting with the case.
“He has a valid visa ... and he went back to visit home, and now he can’t come back?” Mr Dehghani’s friend, Omar Rashed, told The Globe.
“He got an apartment, he did everything he’s supposed to do, he followed all the rules, he jumped through all the hoops. It’s injustice. And today is Martin Luther King Day, of all days. Does anyone see the irony in this?”
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