Iranian PhD student forced to self-deport after US detention on vague claims
An Iranian doctoral student at the University of Alabama has been forced to self-deport after six weeks of detention over unsubstantiated charges as the US administration ramps up pressure on foreign students and immigrants.
Alireza Doroudi was detained by immigration officials in March as part of US President Donald Trump’s widespread immigration crackdown and has been held at a facility in Jena, Louisiana, over 480 kilometers from where he lived with his fiancée, Sama Bajgani, in Alabama.
The State Department accused Doroudi at the time of posing “significant national security concerns,” with Doroudi’s lawyer, David Rozas, saying the US government had not offered any evidence to support the claim.
Rozas said Doroudi, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Alabama who entered the United States legally in January 2023 on a student visa, had decided to self-deport and stop fighting deportation after the judge in the case, Maithe Gonzalez, gave him until the end of May to refile motions and denied Doroudi bond.
Bajgani said he has no criminal record, entered the country legally and was not politically outspoken like other students who have been targeted.
Describing her fiancé as a “nerd” and “a really big thinker” who spent long days in the lab, Bajgani said Doroudi does not deserve what happened to him and now the life they built in Alabama is over.
“I am not happy about the whole thing that happened to us, and I need time to grieve for what I am going to put behind and leave,” she said. “All the dreams, friendships and dreams we had with each other.”
In a letter to Bajgani from behind bars in April, Doroudi called his detention a “pure injustice.”
“I didn’t cause any trouble in this country,” he said. “I didn’t enter illegally. I followed all the legal paths.”
Rozas said he has not seen such a case in his 21 years as an immigration attorney, underlining that the authorities had denied his client due process and forced him to choose between indefinite detention and self-deporting.
“I’m absolutely devastated and I think it’s a travesty of justice,” Rozas said. “The government has provided no evidence in the record that Mr. Doroudi poses any national security threat.”
More than 1,000 international students across the US have had their visas or legal status revoked since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials.
They included some who took part in mass rallies across the US academic facilities in support of Palestinians and against Israel’s genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University in Somerville, Massachusetts, was detained in March over accusations by the Department of Homeland Security of engaging “in activities in support of Hamas” after writing an opinion piece.
The article called on Tufts to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” and to “disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”
Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi have also been placed under detention in relation to their alleged support for Palestine.
Like in Doroudi and Ozturk’s cases, the federal government has relied on vague claims that Khalil and Mahdawi pose “national security threats” to justify detaining them despite their status as legal residents.
