An Iranian couple
seeking refuge in the U.S. has been separated for nearly two years after separate immigration judges issued sharply diverging rulings on their nearly identical asylum applications.
Mohammadjamal Azizi and Hannaneh Alikaram requested asylum after arriving in the United States in late 2024, for fear of the persecution they would likely face as Christian converts in Iran, where they had twice been arrested due to their faith.
Since arriving in the U.S., they have faced sharply different versions of American justice, the result of a process advocates refer to bitterly as “immigration roulette”: Azizi — who goes by the name Liam — has been free for more than a year, after his asylum claim was granted, while Alikaram has suffered 21 months in detention, more than a year of that coming after her claim was rejected.
Until recently, it is likely that Alikaram would not have spent nearly as much time in detention as she has. But amid the twin agendas of
mass detention
and
mass deportation
, the Trump administration has swept aside years of precedent by locking up people who would previously have been allowed to fight their cases from outside detention, while going after communities formerly protected from deportation due to the likelihood of persecution back home.
ICE Worked With Iranian Regime to Set Up Deportation Flights as Trump Laid Plans for War
Iranians have found themselves the crosshairs. Last year, amid the so-called 12-Day War between the U.S.–Israel and Iran, senior officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a scheme to begin deportations to Iran, a plan that resulted in
three planes full of Iranian deportees
being sent back to Iran on charter flights.
Those flights were suspended earlier this year after the U.S. and Israel launched the ongoing war on Iran, but multiple Iranians with final orders of removal have been deported to
countries where they have no ties
, including
Panama
and the
