Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian doctoral student at the University of Alabama, was arrested off-campus by ICE agents this week and now faces deportation for unclear reasons. This arrest has sparked outcries from his fellow students at the University of Alabama and countless individuals concerned about the deterioration of civil rights across the United States.
NIAC, for its part, has demanded that ICE make clear the circumstances surrounding his arrest – which they still have not done. If Doroudi didn’t commit a crime, he must be released and allowed to return to his studies.
An ICE spokesperson has claimed that Doroudi “posed significant national security concerns.” Yet such extraordinary claims require supporting evidence, which has not been offered in the slightest.
Was Doroudi’s arrest a mistake, or a case of mistaken identity? Was the arrest related to visa complications or violations of U.S. law? Right now, there’s no clear word. Yet a young man from the Iranian community here in the United States has had his future upended without any basic respect for the due process that everyone in our democracy is owed.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has touted this week that he has utilized a little-known legal authority to revoke over 300 visas of students who allegedly participated in anti-war protest or spoke out in some form against the actions of a foreign nation in Israel. These students thought they had the protection of the U.S. Constitution that American officials so like to cite with pride, but instead now face deportation for engaging in very American activities. A Palestinian green card holder was ripped away from his wife as they were expecting a child and now is sitting in prison in Louisiana. A Turkish student visa holder in Massachusetts was ambushed on the street by plainclothes officers in masks and arrested, seemingly for writing an op-ed. These harsh and disproportionate actions have spread fear and uncertainty among students and immigrant communities across the United States.
There have been other shocking steps from the Trump administration in the immigration space, including the deportation of Venezuelan men to a foreign prison in El Salvador — in open defiance of a court order. They were not offered due process and their families only learned where their husbands, fathers and sons had been sent from news reports. Many of the families of the individuals targeted claim they have no connection to a gang that the administration has labeled terrorists and accused the deportees of belonging to.
The notion that the President can label someone a terrorist based on their national origin or deport them for exercising their Constitutionally-protected freedom of speech should be chilling to all Americans, and particularly for communities like ours whose identities have been securitized and subjected to relentless scrutiny.
While we know that many of the other students who have been targeted for deportation were active in demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza and the administration is dubiously citing this as basis for removal, Doroudi appears not to have been involved in activism and instead solely focused on his studies. He was reportedly not active in any demonstrations that have drawn Trump’s ire, and entered the country in 2023 on a valid multiple-entry visa for a PhD program on mechanical engineering. His visa status was reportedly changed six months after he came here, but he appears to have maintained his legal status in the country and received assurances from his university.
While we recognize that we do not have all the facts on Doroudi’s case given the lack of details from the government, we do know this: we are supposed to be a country of laws and those laws are being flouted by the administration. We are not supposed live in fear of plainclothes ICE agents abducting people off the streets, we are not supposed to send people in the U.S. to prison without charges or due process, and we do not deport people to foreign labor camps in secret. We are not ruled by kings or Supreme Leaders, and our government is supposed to be accountable and work for us – not the other way around. Hence, we reiterate our demand that ICE and the U.S. government comply with the law: if these students are not being charged with a crime, they need to be released. Their Constitutionally protected rights, including due process and freedom of speech and assembly, must be honored. And lawmakers need to do far more to demand answers and accountability regarding the administration’s illegal actions.