by Citing a serious risk of irreversible harm, a Louisiana magistrate judge on Monday ordered the release of an Iranian PhD student who had been detained immediately following the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities last month and prohibited authorities from trying to deport him.
While Iran was embroiled in a 12-day war with Israel that the United States briefly joined, the 29-year-old student, Pouria Pourhosseinhendabad, seems to be the first Iranian person that the Trump administration attempted to deport.
On June 22, one day after President Trump declared that the United States had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, plunging the nation straight into the war, Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad, a mechanical engineering student at Louisiana State University, and his wife, Parisa Firouzabadi, were taken into custody. Since then, he has been detained at one of the agency’s biggest detention facilities in the South, the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center. Since Ms. Firouzabadi was only referenced in passing in the petition and is not identified as an ICE detainee in public records, it appears that she has been released.
According to his attorneys, there was an unlawful ruse used in the couple’s arrest. When state police officers knocked on the door of the couple’s Baton Rouge apartment, they said they were looking into a hit-and-run accident that had damaged their car. Rather, the police escorted the couple to a sizable contingent of tactically outfitted, masked ICE officials waiting below, according to Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad’s attorneys.
According to Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad’s attorneys, he has an active F-1 student visa that is set to expire in December 2030, and there was no arrest warrant. In their plea for his release, they contended that it is unconstitutional for ICE to utilize a deception to get someone to unlock their front door before they have a court-issued arrest warrant and no emergency situation is present.
Before Magistrate Judge Joseph H.L. Perez-Montes of the Western District of Louisiana rendered a decision in the case, the government’s assistant U.S. attorney failed to produce any evidence or a counternarrative challenging the accusations. A request for more information on the matter was not answered by the lawyer.
The emergency petition for Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad’s release was granted by Judge Perez-Montes, who also prohibited the authorities from transferring him to another jurisdiction. In the past, the Trump administration has relocated individuals it wants to deport to more hospitable legal jurisdictions.
The petitioner has demonstrated that there is a serious risk that he would sustain irreversible injury, including the possibility of ongoing incarceration and deprivation of liberty, the judge noted in these substantiated claims.
