Federal immigration officials have released an Iranian woman whom they allowed to stay in the US without legal status for the last 47 years, until agents in tactical gear and unmarked vehicles suddenly nabbed her in front of her New Orleans home on 22 June – the day after American forces bombed Iran.
A letter-writing campaign extolling decades of community service by Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, 64, and care for her neighbors in the quiet Lakeview section of the city helped get her case in front of Steve Scalise, the Republican US House majority leader, and then top Trump administration officials, Kashanian’s neighbor and longtime friend Connie Uddo said.
“We got a little over 200 letters in just a week,” Uddo said. “People were calling constantly.”
She recounted how Scalise, their community’s congressperson, “was inundated with phone calls and emails and said he had to take a look”. Scalise and his staff met with Kashanian’s family, researched her case, spoke with Trump administration officials and got it to federal immigration officials.
Kashanian’s American husband of 35 years, Russ Milne, and their 32-year-old daughter, Kaitlynn, are now able to pick her up from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in Basile, Louisiana – three hours west of New Orleans – and bring her home.
Kashanian came to the US legally on a student visa in 1978, when she was just 17. She tried to stay beyond her visa by seeking asylum after the anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution seized control of her home country in 1979. But court records show she was denied asylum in 1984 and lost her last appeal in 1993.
She also tried to get permanent legal residency – colloquially known as a green card – in her 20s by marrying a US citizen, but she admitted it was a sham and got divorced. A federal court ruled in 2001 that the fraudulent marriage disqualified her from ever getting legal status by getting married, no matter how legitimate. The court acknowledged her marriage to Milne was “bona fide” but ruled that she couldn’t overcome the sham one from her 20s.
Still, Stephanie Hilferty, a Louisiana state House member and Republican from the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, said Kashanian’s case deserved a second look. And she worked with Kashanian’s family to gather letters about Kashanian’s character and dedication to America, hoping to get them in front of Donald Trump.
Scalise also spoke with Russ and Kaitlynn Milne about Kashanian’s case. Scalise then spoke with the Trump administration, ensuring that Ice officials reviewed her file and read the hundreds of letters Hilferty had collected.
Kashanian’s court records show immigration officials ordered her deportation several times since 1983. But each time, they made her departure voluntary because of what the court called her “good moral character”. And for the last two decades, a judge allowed her to stay as long as she continued to follow the law and checked in regularly.
She has no criminal record and her family says she’s never missed an immigration check-in appointment. But she was never able to attain legal immigration status despite obeying the rules the government and courts imposed on her so she could stay.
Scalise’s office is planning to work with Kashanian’s attorney to help her pursue asylum or permanent residency under current immigration laws, which have changed since she first pursued those avenues four decades ago.
The timing of Kashanian’s detention came just after the US’s 21 June airstrikes in Iran. Those bombings coincided with the ramping-up of deportations of Iranians by the Trump administration.
Kashanian’s Ice detention also came amid a nationwide crackdown by the agency, which has seen tens of thousands of immigrants detained, often by masked agents, plunging many communities into fear and outraging civil liberties advocates.
