Madonna ‘Donna’ Kashanian, 64, was taken by plainclothes officers from her home in New Orleans
A 64-year-old Iranian woman, who has lived in the US for 47 years, was detained by immigration agents on Sunday morning while gardening outside her home in New Orleans.
According to a witness, plainclothes officers in unmarked vehicles handcuffed Madonna “Donna” Kashanian and transported her to a Mississippi jail before transferring her to the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile, reports Nola.
Kashanian arrived in the US in 1978 on a student visa and later applied for asylum, citing fears of persecution due to her father’s ties to the US-backed Shah of Iran. Her asylum request was ultimately denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she comply with immigration requirements, a condition her family says she always met.
She arrived before the Iranian revolution. Going back after the revolution with a Western education means at the very least she would have been deemed very very very suspicious. And why would a new paranoid religious government take the risk at all? Easier to purge.