Arbitrariness or routine procedure: stories of visa and green card holders who were detained and deported

In recent weeks, some U.S. visa and green card holders have been subjected to harrowing ordeals, including sudden arrests at ports of entry and weeks-long stays in pretrial detention centers U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). NY Mag tells some of these stories.

These incidents occurred against the backdrop of US President Donald Tramp tightens measures on all types of immigration. Foreign tourists are canceling or reconsidering their travel plans to the United States in response to various measures taken by the White House administration.

Arrest of green card holder and former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was clearly political, while other cases seem more accidental. Here are some of the most high-profile stories.

Rasha Alavi, a Lebanese physician at Brown University

Dr. Rasha Alavi is a 34-year-old kidney transplant specialist at Brown University Medical School. With a valid visa, her deported On March 15, despite a court order temporarily blocking her deportation.

Alawi is a Lebanese citizen. She was detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport on March 13 after returning to the United States from her native Lebanon. The U.S. consulate there had issued her an H-1B visa sponsored by her employer, Brown Medicine. At the airport, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers found evidence that Alawi sympathized with the militant group Hezbollah and revoked her visa.

On the subject: What Will Happen to New York's Economy If Trump Deports All Illegal Immigrants Living in the City

The Lebanese woman's cousin, Yara Shehab, challenged CBP's actions in court on her behalf. U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin barred the government from deporting Allawi without giving the court 48 hours' notice. But the next day, the Lebanese woman was put on a plane to Paris, despite her lawyers' last-ditch efforts to stop the flight at the airport.

Over the weekend, it was unclear why Alavi was detained and deported.

On March 17, Justice Department officials said in a lawsuit that CBP officers found evidence Lebanese sympathies for Hezbollah.

Federal authorities said they deported a Lebanese doctor with a U.S. visa last week after finding “photos and videos” of prominent Hezbollah figures in the deleted items folder of her cellphone. Allawi told CBP agents that she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah while visiting Lebanon last month. The doctor said she supported him “from a religious standpoint,” but not from a political standpoint.

“As a result of the discovery of these photographs and videos, CBP interviewed Dr. Alavi and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined,” the U.S. attorney wrote in the lawsuit. “Therefore, CBP revoked her visa and deemed Dr. Alavi inadmissible to the United States.”

The government said CBP officials received a judge's order blocking Alavi's deportation only after the plane carrying her had already departed.

Fabian Schmidt, green card holder

Fabian Schmidt, a 34-year-old electrical engineer with a green card living in New Hampshire, was arrested on March 7 after arriving at Boston’s Logan Airport after a trip to Europe. His mother claims she was “brutally interrogated” for several hours at the airport, forced to give up her green card, and briefly hospitalized when she lost consciousness. She eventually transferred him to an ICE detention center in Rhode Island.

“These statements are outright lies about CBP,” said Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs Hilton Beckham. “When a person is found to have drug-related charges and attempts to reenter the country, law enforcement officers take appropriate action.”

Ten years ago, Schmidt was charged with marijuana possession.

Schmidt and his mother moved to the United States in 2007 and received green cards in 2008. He moved from California to New Hampshire in 2022. His mother described her son as a hard-working electrical engineer. He has a girlfriend and an 8-year-old daughter. They are U.S. citizens.

Schmidt had a misdemeanor charge for possessing marijuana in his car in 2015. The charge was dropped after California changed marijuana possession laws.

Schmidt missed a 2022 hearing because notice was not sent to his new address. His mother noted that her son was successfully recovering from alcoholism. He had a DUI charge that he had worked and paid off about a decade ago.

Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia University graduate student from India

Ranjani Srinivasan, a 37-year-old Fulbright scholar from India, learned on March 5 that the State Department had canceled her student visa.

She appears to have been targeted by the Trump administration in a pattern of targeting Columbia University students linked to the school's pro-Palestinian protests.
Late on March 7, ICE agents attempted to detain Srinivasan at her apartment, but her roommate refused to open the door.

In an interview, the neighbor said the agents initially identified themselves as "police." Fearing their identity, they refused to give their badge numbers. The agents stood to the side of the door so they could not be seen through the peephole. The building's doorman, also an immigrant, explained that he let the three agents into the building because he was scared.

Srinivasan flew to Canada that night, and the next day the university informed the graduate student that her admission had been revoked because she no longer had a legal right to be in the United States.

The roommate again refused to open the door to ICE agents when they returned the following night. A few days later, they returned with a warrant and searched the apartment.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused Srinivasan of supporting Hamas. When she left the country, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem accused the Indian woman of promoting “violence and terrorism” and celebrated her “self-deportation.”

Srinivasan said she had never been subject to disciplinary action by the university and had a good academic record.

She admitted that during the war in Gaza, she liked pro-Palestinian posts online about “human rights violations” and shared them on social media.

Camila Munoz, the Peruvian immigrant who married a Trump voter

Camila Munoz and her husband Bradley Bartell were separated by an immigration agent at an airport checkpoint as the couple attempted to fly home to Wisconsin after their honeymoon in Puerto Rico.

The couple were sure the U.S. government knew they had applied for Munoz’s green card. She had overstayed her original visa. But, the couple reasoned, Munoz had been vetted from the start, working on a W-2 and paying taxes. Before agents took her away, the Peruvian woman removed her wedding ring, afraid it would be confiscated. Munoz stuffed it into her backpack and handed it to a shaking Bartell.

Agents say the Peruvian woman overstayed her visa in 2020 when COVID-19 prevented her from flying home. She is now being held at an ICE facility in Louisiana, and it took her husband nearly a week to figure out where Munoz was.

Bartell voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election and now doesn’t understand why his wife, who has no criminal record, was drawn into the repression of the 47th president.

The money the couple had saved for a down payment on a house evaporated in lawyer fees. The remaining savings will go toward bail for Munoz's release, if the Peruvian woman is given the chance.

The couple thought a lot about Bartell's vote in the 2024 election. He thought the Trump administration would go after people who sneak across the border, bypassing all customs checks, but he never expected his wife to be arrested.

"The agency knows who she is and where she's from," Bartell said. "They need to do an investigation, not keep these people locked up. It doesn't make any sense."

10-Year-Old Mexican-American Girl From Texas With Brain Cancer

Sometimes legal immigrants suffer, too. A 10-year-old U.S. citizen living in Texas with her undocumented parents was recently deported.

The girl was undergoing treatment for brain cancer in Houston. Her family was detained while visiting the city in February. The girl's parents were subsequently deported.

The family's ordeal began last month. They were rushing from Rio Grande City, where they lived, to Houston, where their daughter's doctors work. The family was rushing for an emergency medical check. The parents had made this trip at least five times before and had always gotten through immigration checkpoints without any problems. In previous cases, the parents had shown officers letters from their doctors and lawyers to get through.

But in early February, these letters were not enough – they were arrested at a checkpoint. The parents could not produce legal immigration documents. The mother tried to explain her daughter’s circumstances to the officers, but “they were not interested in it.”

The 10-year-old girl was diagnosed with brain cancer last year and underwent surgery to remove the tumor.

“The doctors gave me practically no hope for her life, but, thank God, a miracle happened,” the mother said.

The tumor on the girl's brain has not completely gone away. It causes difficulty with speech and movement on the right side of her body. Before the family was deported from the United States, the girl regularly visited doctors to monitor her recovery. She underwent rehabilitation therapy and took medication to prevent seizures.

Jessica Bresche, a German tourist detained by ICE more than six weeks ago

Jessica Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist from Berlin, was arrested on January 25. She was trying to enter the US with an American friend at the San Ysidro border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego.

She had an ESTA permit, an automated system used to determine the security of people entering the United States. But immigration officials suspected that she intended to work in the States because she had tattoo equipment with her. Agents suspected that the German tourist had worked in the United States the last time she visited the country.

Bresche was arrested and detained at the border crossing. She was transferred to the Otay Mesa Immigration Detention Center in California. She was held in U.S. custody for 46 days before being deported to Germany on March 12. Bresche says she was held in solitary confinement at the facility for eight days.

“It was terrible,” she said.

CoreCivic, which operates Otay Mesa, denies that the German woman was held "in any type of restraint for eight days."

It is unclear why Bresche was held in custody for so long.

Lukas Sielaff, a German tourist detained by ICE more than two weeks ago

Another German citizen, 25-year-old Lukas Sielaff, was detained at the San Ysidro border crossing on February 14. He had an ESTA permit and was visiting his American fiancée, who lives in Las Vegas. The fiancée explained to reporters that they had traveled to Tijuana to get veterinary care for her dog. But when they tried to re-enter the US, CBP officers almost immediately became very aggressive and hostile towards them.

Sielaff admitted to reporters that he had given the wrong answer to a question about where he lived due to a language barrier. His ESTA permit was ultimately revoked, he was handcuffed and arrested.

"There was no evidence that I was overdue for anything," the German tourist noted.

His fiancee said she tried to find out what was happening to her fiance at the border crossing, only to be patted down by ICE officers and briefly shackled to a bench.

At the border, CBP officers held him for two days, Sielaff said. Then ICE agents transferred him to the Otay Mesa Immigration Detention Center. There, he shared a cell with eight other detainees. He was held for a total of 16 days before he returned to Germany on March 6.

Sielaff’s fiancée called immigration officials daily. She hired lawyers, gave interviews to news outlets, and repeatedly contacted the German consulate. Sielaff was eventually granted voluntary deportation on a flight that cost him $2.