Since Jan. 20, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard and Tufts universities have been unwittingly competing for media coverage around President Donald Trump’s crackdown on college campuses. In each school, notable students have been targeted for punitive action for similar reasons: expressing views on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza that the U.S. government doesn’t endorse.
An unlikely name in the lineup of targeted schools was the University of Alabama. And the student in question wasn’t a politics enthusiast. He hadn’t joined the pro-Palestine protests rippling through university campuses. So it came as a rude awakening to Alireza Doroudi, a doctoral researcher in mechanical engineering from Iran, when six Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up at his house on Reed Street in Tuscaloosa, at around 3 a.m. Eastern time on March 25, to arrest him and inform him that he was being subjected to removal proceedings.
On May 8, one week after Trump delivered the University of Alabama’s commencement speech, the unexpected happened at the LaSalle Immigration Court, where Doroudi was bracing for an order of deportation after an unsuccessful bond hearing. The Department of Homeland Security’s attorney told Judge Maithe Gonzalez that the agency was willing to drop its charges against him. The case against the 32-year-old had been prompted by an administrative error.
To support the government’s case for removing Doroudi, the judge had argued that he was a national security threat, citing his allegedly scarce community ties. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t clarify how this could have been the case, nor did the court provide insight into those allegations. When Doroudi spoke with me from the detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, he said he understood that the mere label of a national security-related infringement would block his path to many international educational opportunities in the future.
Threats to national security are defined under a broad range of laws and executive orders, and it never became clear which category was invoked in the litigation against Doroudi. His bail petition was rejected on the same basis. He could have resumed his studies by now.
But Doroudi wasn’t prepared for further uncertainty. The strain of prison life was beyond his endurance. He declared during the master calendar hearing that he was opting for voluntary departure: Before a deportation order was meted out, he would be leaving the United States at his own expense. And he is now onboard a flight that is expected to touch down at Tehran’s international airport shortly.
“My vision is declining, and I can’t hear well,” Doroudi told me in a phone conversation from the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, where he spent nearly two months before ICE and the Iranian interest section in Washington completed their coordination on the logistics of his return, using the meager diplomatic channels available. In the absence of official diplomatic relations between the two countries, tasks like this are immeasurably more complicated and time-consuming.
U.S. law stipulates that deportees must be accepted by their countries of origin, and that the two countries have a formal understanding on each subject of removal. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the bedrock of the U.S. immigration system, “recalcitrant countries” that deny or delay the readmission of their citizens face sanctions. Iran is one of 15 noncompliant nations. But it’s not because it doesn’t want its people back; often, it just wishes to defy Washington. Otherwise, every Iranian living in America is potentially a person of interest to authorities in Tehran.
An insular government without direct access to the United States, the Islamic republic would find it useful to interact with and glean information from Iranians who have spent time in America, especially as scholars and academics, and bring itself up to speed with what its ideological rival is doing. In the case of Iran, at least, Trump’s immigration crackdown doesn’t only benefit the most hardcore anti-immigrant groups in America. It benefits Tehran, too.
ICE has recently detained several high-profile figures in its Jena facility. Doroudi told me that he ran into Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and U.S. permanent resident who has been in custody since March 8. Trump considers Louisiana a friendly jurisdiction, one where he is less likely to face resistance from judges as he presses ahead with his anti-immigrant agenda. Gonzalez, who denied Doroudi’s petition for release on bail in an April 17 hearing, didn’t respond to New Lines’ request for comment.
“They are not mistreating me here,” Doroudi told me when still in custody. “I have a lawyer, and he knows how to protect me if something happens. But in a room where I can say 100 people are staying, at each time 50 people are talking in their loudest voice, and I can’t sleep.” I could feel the despair in his tone.
Those who know him believe he was motivated and dedicated to his work as a student, and studying at a prestigious academic institution in the United States was a goal he had pursued for many years. When things unraveled so dramatically, he concluded that there was little left to fight for. “I just want to say that although I had lots of hope for my studies, there’s no reason for me to stay anymore,” he said. “What happened to me, I don’t wish on my worst enemy,” he told me before we hung up.
“You’re the first graduating class of the golden age of America,” Trump told the University of Alabama students graduating in spring 2025, as they listened to him speak at the 15,000-seat Coleman Coliseum. “In America, the impossible is what we all do best. There’s nothing you cannot do if you’re willing to fight for it,” Trump added.
Doroudi wasn’t meant to be one of those to achieve the impossible in the “golden age of America.” At the end of his last hearing, when he settled on voluntary self-deportation, he told his lawyer, “I love this country, but they don’t want me here, so I will go home.”
Doroudi’s fiancee, Sama Ebrahimi, who is also a University of Alabama doctoral researcher, has lived through a comparable stretch of apprehension and hardship, first separated from her beloved by almost 340 miles, and now by two continents and an ocean as he returns to Tehran. Shortly after Doroudi was detained and taken to Pickens County Jail in Carrollton, Alabama, before being transported to Jena, their property manager issued them a notice of eviction. Ebrahimi’s dilemmas were compounded.
Ebrahimi donated appliances that they didn’t need, and sold valuables that she couldn’t carry. She consolidated the possessions they accumulated over two years living in America into a single piece of luggage. Ever since, she has been staying with friends, moving from one place to another every few nights. Planning for new lodging so frequently is one challenge. Being in the position of asking several people to host her for an indefinite period comes with its own unease.
Ebrahimi’s and Doroudi’s love story began with their shared immigration pathway. They met in June 2022 at the U.S. embassy in Muscat, Oman, where they were both applying for visas to enroll in their doctoral studies. Doroudi was on his way to the University of North Dakota, and Ebrahimi, a graduate of Iran University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, was admitted to Mississippi State University’s doctoral program in educational psychology. They realized that they had feelings for each other and decided to continue the journey together.
Iranian citizens need to travel to a third country to apply for any type of U.S. visa. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Tehran was closed down after the 1979 hostage crisis. Many students with offers from U.S. universities endure enormous anxiety before and after their visa appointments, which are often followed by an ambiguous “administrative processing.” On WhatsApp groups and online forums, they share their interview experiences and obtain updates on the status of their applications. Doroudi and Ebrahimi stayed in touch beyond the embassy WhatsApp chat.
Doroudi received an offer from the University of Alabama that came with more generous funding, so he didn’t go to North Dakota. Ebrahimi also transferred to Alabama, though her reasons were of a different nature. She wanted to study next to Doroudi, on the same campus. Now, both will be denied the opportunity to finish their studies. Ebrahimi’s department has agreed to give her the chance to complete enough credits through a summer course to at least earn a master’s degree. She will fly back to Iran in a few months.
“I will continue with my current nomad-style living arrangements, and after completing the requirements of a master’s program, I’ll get a degree,” she told me. “Then, I’ll book a ticket in summer to fly back to Tehran from somewhere, any city in America.”
David Rozas, the immigration attorney who represented Doroudi, believed he was very likely to win the case if he persisted. The ensuing legal precedent could have made a difference to students who may face similar arbitrary action in the future. But as Doroudi gave up under the weight of incarceration, the case went down the Trump administration’s immigration docket inventory as an anomaly: It was a lose-lose battle as both sides resigned halfway through.
“We had the impression that the court sessions normally started with the final decision,” Ebrahimi said. “Even in the master calendar hearing when the government attorney stated they were ready to drop the charges, the judge had opened the hearing with a ruling that Alireza be deported.”
The only charges against Doroudi were that his F-1 entry visa was revoked six months after he came to the U.S. as an international student, and that he had failed to maintain his status. The second charge was refuted by the university’s confirmation that he had been engaged in his program of study as a doctoral researcher, evidenced by his active SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Program) record.
The first misstep, under the Biden administration, was a “prudential” revocation of his visa by the U.S. embassy in Muscat in June 2023, when he was already doing his doctoral research in America. The reasons weren’t communicated to him, and with an active SEVIS file, a revoked visa alone cannot be grounds for removal. The federal government admitted this — but only after Doroudi made up his mind about leaving.
“If we had seen some signs of reason in the adjudication process, we would have continued fighting,” Ebrahimi said. “Alireza loved to be able to go back to work, to renew his contract with the university, and even win the case, and continue studying. But he wasn’t given the opportunity.”
I asked Ebrahimi if she thought taking additional steps and pursuing a victory in court would have been worth it as a milestone in cases at the nexus of immigration law and academia. She acknowledged that the couple understood that their trajectory could become a blueprint for how international students would be treated in the future amid the ongoing attack on universities.
Still, “in a situation that was so emotionally difficult for Alireza, me and his family, we couldn’t think about the outcome of the case leaving an important impact on the prospects of other students,” Ebrahimi said. “Because we were in a draining situation ourselves.”
The emotional whiplash of being left alone to confront a legal jumble caused by an anti-immigration frenzy, on the one hand, and seeing signs that their local community hadn’t abandoned them, on the other, echoed throughout Ebrahimi’s words. A GoFundMe campaign she set up to contribute to the attorney and administrative fees associated with their ordeal raised more than $26,000 in two months. She disabled it two weeks ago.
“I am personally grateful to the people of Tuscaloosa and all those who stood by us, and Alireza shares the same sentiments,” Ebrahimi said. “What happened hasn’t affected the views of the people of Tuscaloosa and those who know us. So many people were hurt that we were forced into this difficult situation because of a mistake.”
Like Doroudi, studying in the United States was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Ebrahimi. She could continue her studies here, something she labored hard to have the opportunity to do. Now, they will get married back in Iran after recovering from what has been a shocking turn of events.
Knowing that they won’t be forcibly separated provides some solace. “I am feeling better now that he feels better. The most important thing for him is to be able to leave that place,” she said a few hours after the court session on May 8.
And when they’re together again in their hometown of Shiraz, they will be reflecting on a universe of unanswered questions. “For me, the traumas of this episode will remain forever. My faith in the idea of immigration has been broken, and it will stay with me,” she said.
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