A 64-year-old Iranian woman who has lived in the U.S. for nearly five decades was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Sunday while tending to her garden in New Orleans.
Madonna “Donna” Kashanian was handcuffed by plainclothes officers who arrived in unmarked vehicles, according to a witness. She was first taken to a jail in Mississippi, then transferred to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Nola.com reported.
Kashanian came to the U.S. in 1978 on a student visa and later applied for asylum, citing fear of persecution due to her father’s association with the former U.S.-backed Shah of Iran. Her asylum application was denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she follow immigration requirements—something her family says she has always done.
She has no criminal record.
Her arrest came just hours after U.S. airstrikes in Iran, although federal officials have not commented directly on her case. The Department of Homeland Security did issue a statement over the weekend noting that 11 Iranians had been detained nationwide.
Kashanian has lived in New Orleans since she was a teenager, raising a family and sharing Persian recipes on YouTube. She was active in her community and her daughter’s school life.
Her family says she feared being deported for years, especially following Donald Trump’s re-election. She had attempted to adjust her immigration status through marriage to a U.S. citizen, but was denied due to a previous marriage the government considered fraudulent.
Neighbors say the arrest happened in under a minute. Kashanian briefly called her family from processing later that day, but they didn’t hear from her again until Tuesday. Since then, her husband and daughter have been scrambling to find legal help—a difficult task in Louisiana, where immigration attorneys are in short supply and ICE detentions are surging.
In recent days, ICE also arrested two Iranian LSU students in Baton Rouge and detained 84 people during a raid at a Louisiana racetrack. Of those, ICE said only “at least two” had criminal records.
According to The Guardian, there has been an 807% increase in ICE arrests of individuals with no criminal history since Trump’s second inauguration in January. ICE is now detaining around 59,000 people in facilities across the country.
