Morgan Karimi, an Alabama native who is seven months pregnant, has a theory for why her husband, Ribvar, was arrested by federal immigration agents on Sunday: They targeted him because he is from Iran.
The ceasefire between Israel and Iran appeared to be holding Wednesday, and President Donald Trump has indicated there would be no additional U.S. involvement in the conflict beyond the strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites last weekend. But for Morgan Karimi and some immigration advocates, there’s a concern that the administration will use the possibility of retaliatory attacks on the U.S. as an excuse to pursue a broader crackdown on immigration.
“What is he gonna spy on, in Locust Fork, Alabama, in the middle of a cow pasture?” she told NOTUS. “Like, what is he gonna do? He’s at home every day. He takes care of me. He’s just a good husband.”
Ribvar Karimi is one of 11 Iranian nationals that the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained at the start of the week. The department’s news release announcing the arrest pointed to his previous service in the Iranian army, which the country mandates of all young men. ICE likewise celebrated his arrest, stating, with a police siren emoji, that he “had an Islamic Republic of Iran Army identification card in his possession” when he was arrested.
His wife said he fought ISIS while serving, and that he only had his military ID on him because he handed agents all of his visa paperwork in one folder, attempting to cooperate.
ICE and DHS did not respond to a request for comment for the story.
In the statement announcing the arrests, a DHS spokesperson said, “We don’t wait until a military operation to execute; we proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland.”
No U.S. official has pointed to any credible, specific threats from groups of Iran-backed terrorists secretly living in the U.S. But in recent days, there’s been an increase in Republican elected officials publicly worrying about them.
“Biden let a lot of super cells in,” Trump told reporters Tuesday when asked about sleeper cell threats. “Among everything else, he let a lot of super cells in, many from Iran, but hopefully we’ll take care of them.”
The Trump administration had already set up more hurdles for new Iranian immigrants and travelers as part of its travel ban earlier this month.
But administration officials continue to warn that Iran-backed clandestine immigrant-terrorist blocs pose “a significant threat,” with Republican lawmakers joining in to echo the claims.
“These ICE arrests are an indication of potential Iranian sleeper cells in the US,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna posted Tuesday afternoon on X. “This is exactly why STRONG BORDERS matter. Keep terrorists OUT and Americans SAFE. Thank you DHS.”
When Sen. Chuck Grassley asked at a Senate hearing Tuesday about potential sleeper cells, an FBI official responded that the agency has been “working collaboratively for several months on immigration enforcement with” DHS.
The rhetoric alone was enough to stoke concerns from some advocates that the administration is fueling Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate. But since DHS announced the round of arrests on Tuesday, some of them are now also concerned that this focus will lead to innocent Iranians who came to the U.S. seeking a better life being surveilled, detained and deported.
An immigration advocacy organization in Alabama told NOTUS that it was concerned that the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement changes according to U.S. foreign policy directives. Under Trump, that has proven amorphous and unpredictable.
That approach will inevitably sweep up immigrants with jobs and families, said Miguel Luna, a policy fellow at the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice.
“It’s pretty unfair that enforcement policy is based on American foreign policy, especially in regards to someone who is here, trying to follow the process and just trying to live out his American dream,” Luna said. “It’s just one example of this very disastrous and horrific enforcement policy by this administration.”
James Zogby, president at the Arab American Institute, told NOTUS that he hadn’t yet seen the administration change its immigration enforcement patterns based on its concerns about terrorists or sleeper cells.
But he added that all the talk about sleeper cells, which he said was reminiscent of post-9/11 paranoia, is part of a broader pattern of the Trump administration making unsupported claims about immigrants to justify sweeping enforcement actions.
“We’ve seen it before. It’s used to gin up public and congressional support for assuming more authorities,” Zogby said, comparing it to the Trump administration associating Latino immigrants with gangs.
Ribvar Karimi remains in ICE detention in an Alabama prison as of Wednesday evening, according to ICE’s detainee tracker tool.
Morgan Karimi said that she and her husband underwent years of paperwork, screenings and interviews for him to obtain temporary legal residency status through the K-1 visa program. After getting married in January, she said, they fell behind on filing an adjustment of status while focusing on her pregnancy complications.
DHS said in its news release that the lapse made Ribvar Karimi eligible for deportation. The department sets no hard deadline for that requirement, but the visa program grants engaged foreigners 90 days of temporary authorization to be in the U.S. before getting married. He was supposed to file additional paperwork after their marriage.
Hannah Vickner Hough, legal director at the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that DHS’s batch of arrests shows the detained immigrants were “directly targeted because of their nationality,” adding that Karimi’s case is “not usual for DHS to enforce.”
“A side effect of such targeted animus against Iranians in the immigration space is that other forms of discrimination and community targeting arise as well,” Vickner Hough told NOTUS in an email. “Our office, and probably other local CAIR chapters, have already seen an increase in reports of Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslim communities and an increase in community safety concerns.”
—
Emily Kennard is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.