A magistrate judge in Louisiana on Monday ordered the release of an Iranian doctoral student arrested in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities last month and barred officials from attempting to deport him, citing a “grave risk” of irreparable harm.
The student, Pouria Pourhosseinhendabad, 29, appeared to be the first Iranian national that the Trump administration sought to deport while Iran was engulfed in a 12-day war with Israel that the United States briefly joined.
Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad, a student of mechanical engineering at Louisiana State University, was arrested along with his wife, Parisa Firouzabadi, on June 22, a day after President Trump announced that the United States had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, thrusting the country directly into the war. He has since been held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, one of the agency’s largest detention centers in the South. Ms. Firouzabadi appears to have been released; the petition mentioned her only briefly, and she is not listed in public records as an ICE detainee.
His lawyers said that the couple’s arrest involved an “unconstitutional ruse.” The couple had recently reported a hit-and-run collision that damaged their car, and state police officers knocked on the door of their Baton Rouge apartment, claiming they were investigating the collision. Instead, Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad’s lawyers said, the police led the couple to a large group of masked ICE agents in tactical gear waiting downstairs.
Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad has an active F-1 student visa scheduled to expire in December 2030, according to his lawyers, and there was no warrant for his arrest. They argued in their petition for his release that “a ruse is deemed unconstitutional where ICE tricks an individual to open their front door when they have not yet obtained a judicial warrant for arrest and no exigent circumstances exist.”
An assistant U.S. attorney representing the government in the case did not submit any evidence or counternarrative disputing the allegations before Magistrate Judge Joseph H.L. Perez-Montes of the Western District of Louisiana ruled in the case. The attorney did not respond to a request for additional details in the case.
Judge Perez-Montes granted the emergency petition for Mr. Pourhosseinhendabad’s release and also enjoined the government from moving him to another jurisdiction. The Trump administration has previously moved people it is seeking to deport to more amenable legal jurisdictions.
“In these verified allegations,” the judge wrote “petitioner has established that there is a grave risk he will suffer irreparable harm — specifically to include his possible continued detention and deprivation of liberty.”
Chris Cameron is a Times reporter covering Washington, focusing on breaking news and the Trump administration.
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