Less than a week after the joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes against Iran in late February, a South Bay couple from Iran seeking asylum said Department of Homeland Security agents showed up at their apartment, detained the husband and questioned his pregnant wife about their ties to Iran’s government.
The husband was also interrogated, he said, and spent three weeks at the ICE detention facility in California City before an immigration judge granted his release on bond.
After arriving in the U.S. on tourist visas in 2024, the couple filed for asylum, saying they fear persecution by the same regime federal agents questioned them about.
I think if you’re from Iran, you just have to be ready for DHS or the FBI to show up at your door.
Lina Baroudi, immigration attorney
The couple spoke on the condition of anonymity, sometimes relying on their attorney, Paris Etemadi Scott, legal director of the Pars Equality Center, to interpret.
“The first thing he heard when he arrived at the detention facility was a detainee telling him, ‘Welcome to hell,’” Scott said, relaying the husband’s account in Farsi.
Lina Baroudi, the San Jose immigration attorney who helped secure the husband’s release from California City, said the encounter reflects a broader pattern of heightened scrutiny of Iranians following the U.S. strikes.
“I think if you’re from Iran, you just have to be ready for DHS or the FBI to show up at your door,” Baroudi said. “We’re seeing it across the board from asylum seekers to students to people who already have green cards.”
Iran is among the countries targeted by the Trump administration’s travel restrictions. Earlier this year, the U.S. significantly limited the issuance of visas to Iranian nationals.
Those restrictions, however, came after the couple arrived in the U.S. on tourist visas to visit family in November 2024.
The couple said they had intended to return to Iran. But after receiving alarming news from home, they decided to remain in the U.S. They filed for asylum last spring, a month before their visas were set to expire.
“His family contacted him and said that there was a letter from the investigation units within the Iranian government that had asked him to go back and testify and be interrogated about something,” Scott said, translating. “They decided that it’s not safe to return anymore.”
It wasn’t the first time the husband had been in the crosshairs of the regime, he said.
As a member of Iran’s Kurdish minority, he said he has endured years of political persecution that began when he was arrested and tortured as a teenager during a political opposition protest. He described being deprived of a bathroom for days and being forced to strip out of his clothes and run through a thorny rose garden. If the captives stopped, he said, they were beaten with batons.
“This case was absolutely made for an asylum application,” Scott said. “Just because you’re an asylum seeker, the Constitution doesn’t disappear. They have rights.”
While their visas expired in May 2025, they had pending asylum applications and work permits and believed they were following the law.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the couple entered the U.S. legally on tourist visas, but said they “refused to leave” when those visas expired.
About a week after the U.S. and Israel launched their latest strikes on Iran, the couple said federal agents showed up at their home as the husband was leaving for work.
“The only thing they told me is that I’m here illegally,” he said, recalling being handcuffed, shackled, and taken away by ICE agents. “And I kept telling them I have all my documents.”
His wife, eight months pregnant, said she saw her husband get driven off in a van before she was questioned for hours.
“They asked around 30 questions about Iran and what do you think about the things happening in Iran,” she said.
Scott, her attorney, said her client’s pregnancy saved her from being arrested alongside her husband. A DHS spokesperson later confirmed to NBC Bay Area that agents took her pregnancy into account and decided not to arrest her.
“The questioning by [Homeland Security Investigations] was around Iran,” Scott said. “So, when they’re asking these questions, in my mind it was clear that they were targeting their nation.”
DHS agents also questioned the husband, he said, and asked what he thought about Israel.
“The whole point was trying to figure out what is my relationship with the government [of Iran],” he said. “If I’m a government agent.”
Recalling his time in detention, the husband said he lost weight and feared missing the birth of his first child.
In hopes of freeing the husband from ICE custody, Baroudi filed a motion requesting a bond hearing with an immigration judge, arguing he qualifies for asylum, has no criminal record, and is protected under the Convention Against Torture.
“The government was arguing in the hearing that he was a flight risk because he’d only been at his job a few months,” Baroudi said. “But he had only been at his job for a few months because he had just gotten his work permit.”
When asked why the man was detained despite a pending asylum application, a DHS spokesperson told NBC Bay Area that a “pending application does not confer any type of legal status in the United States.”
The spokesperson added that any allegation “that ICE agents are conducting door-to-door questioning of Iranian immigrants is false” and encouraged “illegal aliens” to self-deport using the CBP Home app.
ICE arrests of Iranians have risen sharply over the past year, with a notable spike after the first U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran in June 2025.
During the first 13 months of President Trump’s second term, roughly 530 Iranian immigrants were arrested by ICE, according to data published by the Deportation Data Project. More than 150 of those arrests occurred in a single week following the attacks against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure last summer.
By comparison, roughly 75 Iranians were arrested during the final 13 months of the Biden administration, according to the data.
“Since the war on Iran started, we have seen an uptick of interest in Iranian non-citizens in the United States,” Baroudi said. “This is nationwide.”
As for the couple, they still live with the fear of being detained again and are haunted by nightmares about the experience.
After the arrest of her husband, the wife said she suffered her first panic attack, and doctors informed her the pregnancy was considered high-risk.
“I felt like I’m going to die,” she said. “I don’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t breathe. I just cried and didn’t know how to control myself.”
But they said it doesn’t compare with their possible fate if they’re ever forced to return home.
“Right now in Iran, people are getting executed because of a story they post online,” the husband said. “So, I can imagine that if I got back there, most likely that’s what’s awaiting me. Death.”