Los Angeles-Iranian asylum seekers who fled the Islamic Republic in the hope of resetting Los Angeles have recently been arrested by immigration officials despite having what lawyers and defenders consider credible cases of pending failure in court.
The arrests follow a pattern that develops throughout the country to attack the Iranians as tensions continue between the Trump and Iran administration.
Many of the asylum seekers are Christians who fled from Iran and their intolerant views towards non -Muslim religions. There are 4 million Iranian exiles worldwide, just under one third of them in the United States, according to the statistics of the Iran Ministry of Foreign Affairs of 2021.
Sudden arrests have led some Iranians to go on hunger strikes in custody and triggered at least one medical emergency during an arrest attempt.
On Tuesday, an Iranian woman experienced a serious panic attack after witnessing her husband’s arrest near an area known as “Tehrangngeles” due to her great Iranian population. The woman called her pastor, Ara Torosian, to help intervene, but he could do little while watching her panic attack in seizures.
The couple’s lawyer requested that the woman and her husband remain in anonymity for privacy reasons.
In a video engraved by Borosian and shared widely on social networks, the woman lay on the spasmeo soil while marking immigration and compliance agents cited on her. Torosian can be listened to with them to manage medical help. You can also hear if they know about the situation in Iran and why Christian Iranians fear returning to their native country.
According to Torosian, the woman and her husband are members of her church and entered the United States last year under CBP One, the mobile application that the Biden administration launched to optimize the asylum search process. President Donald Trump finished the program shortly after returning to office.
The woman was taken to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where ice agents were received by immigrants and detention protesters. Torosian said he was not allowed to enter his hospital room and that immigration officials abruptly rejected a nurse who tried to intercede on his name.
UCLA Health said in a statement that he treated a patient in federal custody and then released the person.
“Despite reports on social networks, there is no ice operation at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center,” said the hospital.
A woman’s lawyer and her husband declined to comment. Immigration officials did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
The incident left Torosian, he said Wednesday.
He arrived in the United States in 2010 as a Christian refugee and is now an American citizen who raises two children in southern California. But recent immigration raids and arrests, along with the anti -immigrant rhetoric of the Trump administration, remind Iran more than ever imagined possible, he said.
“He was seeing a woman on the ground and masked people who wouldn’t show their orders,” he said. “I was surprised. Am I in Iran or am I in Los Angeles?”
Another Iranian Christian family in the Torosian Parish was arrested this week during a programmed check-in with immigration officials.
Seyedmajid Seyedali received a text message during the weekend telling him to be reported to the Federal Court in downtown Los Angeles on Monday with his wife and 4 -year -old daughter, said family lawyer Kaveh Ardalan.
Thinking that it was a routine visit, Tres’s family left his dog at home. But when they arrived, they were taken to the basement and arrested Despite having an asylum audience for September, said Ardalan. They were transferred to a detention center in Texas, where Seyedali’s wife is on a hunger strike, he said.
Ardalan said he has at least five Iranian customers looking for asylum and were recently arrested. It also has customers from Honduras and Venezuela with pending cases that are now in ice custody.
When he can, Ardalan said, he will ask immigration judges to release eligible families on bail. Torosian said his parish is working enough to pay the rent of Seyedali’s house in case the family is released.
“I’m ready for the fight,” he said. “I’m standing for my people.”
