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Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, an Iranian woman who has lived in the United States for almost five decades, was gardening outside her New Orleans home last month when she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. This week, she was released from ICE detention after the intervention of an unlikely figure: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Kashanian, whose husband and daughter are both American citizens, arrived in the U.S. in 1978 on a student visa. After that visa expired, she applied for asylum, citing fear of retribution in her home country due to her father’s work for the U.S.-backed shah, her husband told The Times-Picayune. That application was rejected, but federal authorities granted a “stay of removal,” allowing her to remain in the country as long as she checked in regularly with immigration authorities.
Kashanian “faithfully and fully complied with those terms” for decades, even checking in with immigration authorities while she was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, her attorney Ken Mayeaux told The Associated Press.
After she was detained by ICE, dozens of community members wrote letters of support, with some directly urging President Donald Trump to reconsider her case. But Kashanian’s attorney said it was Scalise’s intervention that was “absolutely crucial” to securing her release.
“We’ve been working with Donna’s family and with the Department of Homeland Security, through ICE, to try to get this case looked at differently,” Scalise, a Republican who represents Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District, which includes most of New Orleans’ suburbs, told local television station WDSU. “Obviously, when she was picked up, we looked at it and said, ‘You know, are they really looking at it the right way, objectively?’ And so they took a second look at it.”
“Here you’ve got somebody who, maybe you’re looking at something she did in the 1970s and ’80s, but her life’s work is what you should be judged on,” Scalise added. “And she’s been a great member of this community. She’s done a lot for a lot of people. Let’s look at that, too.”
Kashanian’s attorney said what’s next for her remains up in the air. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP that “the facts of this case have not changed” and maintained that Kashanian “is in this country illegally.” McLaughlin added that the Iranian has already “exhausted all her legal options.”
While Scalise’s intervention helped free Kashanian from custody, Democratic lawmakers across the country have repeatedly been denied entry into ICE facilities while seeking information about constituents in detention.