\n<\/p>\n
In March, Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian national and doctoral candidate studying mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now, Doroudi has been denied bond as a growing number of international students are being detained and threatened with deportation by the Trump administration on questionable legal grounds.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, immigration judge Maithe Gonz\u00e1lez ruled that Doroudi \u201cfailed to meet the burden of showing that he was not a threat to national security\u201d as reported by AL.com<\/a>. Gonz\u00e1lez also ruled Doroudi to be a flight risk due to his revoked F-1 visa, lack of family in the country, and what she called \u201cscarce ties\u201d to the community.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are deeply disappointed by today\u2019s decision to deny bond by Judge Maithe Gonz\u00e1lez,\u201d David Rozas, an attorney representing Doroudi, told the University of Alabama\u2019s student paper, The Crimson White. \u201cThe government has provided no evidence in the record that Mr. Doroudi poses any national security threat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Doroudi is not a flight risk. He is a beloved member of the community, as evidenced by the overwhelming outpouring of support from students, faculty, and neighbors in recent weeks,\u201d Rozas continued.<\/p>\n Before his detention and subsequent transfer to an ICE detainment facility in Louisiana, Doroudi was living with his fiancee, Sama Bajgani, in Tuscaloosa. A GoFundMe campaign organized by Bajgani to raise money for Doroudi\u2019s legal expenses has raised over $25,000 as of writing.<\/p>\n Following his detainment, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement claiming that Doroudi posed \u201csignificant national security concerns,\u201d but declined to clarify what those concerns may be. Despite this ambiguity, Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s ruling appeared to place the onus of dispelling those concerns on Doroudi and his attorneys.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s most troubling is that the burden of proof has effectively been placed on Mr. Doroudi to disprove a threat that was never substantiated in the first place,\u201d Rozas said. \u201cOur legal system is not built on proving a negative, and yet that\u2019s exactly what is being asked of us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis sets a dangerous precedent, not just for Mr. Doroudi, but for international students across the country, and for the democratic values we claim to uphold. We will appeal this decision and do everything in our power to bring justice to Mr. Doroudi,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n The Crimson White previously reported on text messages which indicated that Doroudi had originally entered the U.S. in January 2023, on an F-1 student visa issued by the U.S. Embassy in Oman. Doroudi\u2019s visa was reportedly revoked six months after entering the U.S., but at the time he was advised by the university\u2019s International Student and Scholar Services that he could continue to stay in the country legally as long as he remained a student.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, Rozas told The Crimson White that Doroudi\u2019s student visa actually appears to be valid when consulting the ICE database \u2014 raising even more questions about why Doroudi was ever detained in the first place.<\/p>\n Doroudi\u2019s circumstance is not unique, as the Trump administration continues to target international students for deportation, seemingly without any regard for their residential status.<\/p>\n In March, Rumeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk<\/a>, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University in Somerville, Massachusetts, was surrounded in the street by ICE officials before being detained. The Department of Homeland Security has accused \u00d6zt\u00fcrk of engaging \u201cin activities in support of Hamas,\u201d seemingly in relation to an opinion essay<\/a> she co-authored in 2024, for the Tufts student newspaper. The essay called on Tufts to \u201cacknowledge the Palestinian genocide\u201d and to \u201cdisclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel\u201d \u2014 two actions which the undergraduate student government had demanded of the university in official resolutions.<\/p>\n A federal judge has since ruled that the U.S. government must release \u00d6zt\u00fcrk<\/a> from the ICE custody, finding that her arrest and detention \u201craised significant constitutional concerns.\u201d \u00d6zt\u00fcrk currently remains detained as the government is expected to appeal the ruling.<\/p>\n Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil<\/a> and Mohsen Mahdawi<\/a> have also been placed under ICE detention in relation to their activism on behalf of Palestine. Like in Doroudi and \u00d6zt\u00fcrk\u2019s cases, the federal government has relied on vague claims that Khalil and Mahdawi pose \u201cnational security threats\u201d to justify detaining them despite their status as legal residents.<\/p>\n What separates Doroudi\u2019s detention from the others is his lack of involvement in any pro-Palestinian protests or activism.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has no history of protest of political activity, and yet he now faces deportation to Iran, a country where returning citizens can face persecution for even the appearance of dissent,\u201d Rozas said.<\/p>\n Even if Doroudi had been involved in such activities, serious First Amendment concerns persist \u2014 as they do for \u00d6zt\u00fcrk, Khalil and Mahdawi.<\/p>\n According to the Associated Press, over 1,000 students<\/a> at 160 colleges and universities across the country have had their visas revoked or legal statuses terminated by the Trump administration since late March. The Alabama Reflector recently reported that 15 international students and campus personnel<\/a> at Auburn University had their visas revoked last week.<\/p>\n The targeting of students like Doroudi for deportation is just one plank of the administration\u2019s mass deportation efforts. Trump and his allies are pursuing the elimination of birthright citizenship<\/a> and are continuing to defy the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s orders to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia<\/a> \u2014 a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador \u2014 back home to the United States. During a recent White House visit by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Trump was caught on a hot mic<\/a> proposing to start sending \u201chomegrown\u201d American citizens to El Salvador for imprisonment, sparking further outrage against the president\u2019s deportation policies.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In March, Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian national and doctoral candidate studying mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now, Doroudi has been denied bond as a growing number of international students are being detained and threatened with deportation by the Trump administration on questionable legal grounds. Last Thursday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11763],"tags":[76083,6415,11039,15704,36865,17294,428,16932,66407,54789,22088,6763,14898,12903,66409],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-197242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alabama","tag-alireza-doroudi","tag-bond","tag-denied","tag-deportation","tag-detained","tag-faces","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-international-student","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-student","tag-threat","tag-trump-administration","tag-university-of-alabama"],"yoast_head":"\n