Arpineh Masihi said goodbye to her husband Arthu Sahakyan and the couple’s four children after federal agents swarmed their California home on Monday.
Masihi, who is from Iran, was arrested and placed into removal proceedings due to immigration issues stemming from a past conviction, according to her husband. She came to the United States when she was 3 years old as a refugee, but her green card was revoked 15 years ago after she was accused of stealing something worth “less than $200,” he said.
In the days after Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, escalating tensions that have threatened to spill over into a regional war with Israel, federal agents reportedly detained dozens of Iranian nationals in the United States — including Masihi.
But the couple aren’t giving up their support for the president. Sahakyan says a red, white and blue TRUMP 2024 flag flying outside their home will stay there.
“I’m still supporting [Trump],” he told FOX 11 in Los Angeles. “Even though my friends say ‘take the flag down, you’re going through a lot.’ I’m like, no. The flag stands.”
Masihi attended an immigration check-in appointment in April, and agents told her “you’re fine” and “see you back in September or October,” Sahakyan said.
Home surveillance video footage from outside their home in Diamond Bar in Los Angeles County on Monday shows Masihi, speaking with several officers as she throws out her arms in exasperation before walking back inside.
“She came and kissed the kids and that was it,” Sahakyan told FOX 11. “That was the last time we saw her.”
Sahakyan insists that “Trump is not trying to do anything bad.”
“We understand what he’s doing. He wants the best for the country,” he told the outlet. “I’m just trying to make the best of it. I don’t want any families to go through this. If they are, I apologize for what they’re going through because it’s hard.”
Masihi’s case is among a wave of similar arrests across the country, from New York to Louisiana, targeting Iranians who are legally living in the United States.
Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, an Iranian woman who has lived in the United States for 47 years, was arrested outside her New Orleans home.
Kashanian, 64, was gardening outside her New Orleans home when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrived and swiftly handcuffed her, according to her family.
She arrived in the United States in 1978 on a student visa and applied for asylum, fearing retaliation for her father’s support of the U.S.-backed shah Mohammad Reza. She is married to a U.S. citizen and the couple have a U.S. citizen daughter.
Kashanian lost that case but was allowed to remain in the country with her family on the condition that she regularly check in with immigration officers
She is now detained inside ICE’s South Louisiana Immigration Center, roughly three hours from New Orleans.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security “has engaged in racial profiling and indiscriminate mass arrests of Iranians across the country, all under the guise of ‘national security,’” according to National Iranian American Council president Jamal Abdi.
More than 130 Iranian nationals have been detained within the days after U.S. airstrikes, with 670 Iranians in ICE custody nationwide, according to Fox News.
“As with all broad and racially motivated enforcement actions, everyday people suffer the most,” Abdi added.
“Like many Iranian Americans, those arrested often came to the U.S. in search of opportunity and freedom from an authoritarian government,” he said. “Now, their mere identity now appears to be grounds for arrest in the so-called ‘land of the free.’”
Sahakyan told FOX 11 that he supports immigration agents vetting Iranian nationals for so-called “sleeper cells.”
“I think it will resolve a lot of issues because we’ll know exactly who’s in here for what reasons, even though I miss [my wife] dearly,” he said. “I think we could have a faster process [where they determine] she’s not a radical, or tied to the crazies, let her out.”
The Trump administration has thus far detained an average of roughly 20,000 immigrants each month, three times as many under the same point in 2024.
The president’s mass deportation agenda has also set an all-time record for the number of people in ICE custody.
More than 56,000 people are currently held in immigrant detention centers across the country, according to a Syracuse University database. Internal government data obtained by CBS News suggests an even higher figure, with roughly 59,000 immigrants behind bars — or 140 percent of the agency’s ostensible capacity to hold them.
Among those in detention now, 47 percent have no criminal record whatsoever, and fewer than 30 percent have been convicted of crimes, according to analysis from The Independent.
