Image by WikimediaImages from Pixabay

This is sort of a bad news becomes good news becomes bad news becomes better news type of story.

On Sunday, an Iranian holding a student visa to study at Northeastern University, 24-year-old Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, was detained by Customs and Border Protection (CPB) as he tried to pass through passport control at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The bad news part of the story is that we’re still allowing a state sponsor of terrorism to send children of its ruling class to American universities. Kind of hard to believe that we still allow this to go on given the Iran’s attacks on US citizens and interests. The first part of the good news is that CPB had received orders to prevent his entrance and put him on the first thing smoking that was heading out of the country. Somehow the ACLU and, it seems, the pro-terror non-declared-agent-of-a-foreign-government organization beloved of Ben Rhodes and the Obama White House, the National Iranian American Council, got involved.

The case was pushed in front of a federal district judge who, at 9:22 p.m. Monday, imposed a 48-hour stay on the deportation and scheduled a hearing at 10 a.m. today. This is the bad news, part deux.

The moment when we found out Shahab will not be deported tonight!!.

Can’t believe we have to go to airports to stop Iranian students who have a valid visa from getting deported . pic.twitter.com/ouuxe7bq3w

— Lily Tajaddini (@lilytaj5) January 21, 2020

Now the final good news. At around 10 p.m. last night, Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, was strapped in seat on an Air France airliner heading for Paris. The good news sequel is that the courtroom was filled with his supporters this morning, who were unaware that he was suffering from jet lag in France at the time, and the communists who run Massachusetts were incensed:

As a @Northeastern & @UMassBoston student, Shahab is my constituent & I’m demanding answers. @CBP hastily put Shahab on a flight out of @BostonLogan w/o due process, violating a court order. We won’t stand for this in the #MA7. #StopDeportingStudentshttps://t.co/Ef009VZ9cp

— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) January 21, 2020

The judge, well he basically yawned:

In court Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the case, declaring it moot because Abadi had already been deported. He added that he did not believe he had the authority to order CBP to allow Abadi to return.

Federal judge issues temporary order to not deport a Northeastern student. CBP does anyway. Federal judge gives up on the case saying “I don’t think they’re going to listen to me.”

I am at a total loss for words. https://t.co/kJaiY4srgV

— Andy Sellars (@andy_sellars) January 21, 2020

Good for the CPB here. They followed the principle of possession being 9/10ths of the law and acted with alacrity to enforce the order banning this guy from the US rather than litigate it until he was social security eligible. We need more of the federal government react to judicial meddling, micromanagement, and overreach the same way.

But there is quite possibly more to the story.

There is a significant amount of traffic from the Iranian ex-pat community who says this guy was not just a student, he was a member of the the Basij, the Tehran regime’s enforcers. Members of this group are sent wherever there are extra-territorial Iranian communities in order to inform on the activities of the members and keep them in line by holding their family members and relatives back home as hostages for their good behavior. (Note this similar case.)

https://twitter.com/Fakhravar/status/1219648386925760513

Mohammad Shahab Dehghani was in Iraq last Nov. after Iranian regime banned travel to Iraq due to escalating protests over there. He must have had a special visa to go there at the time. pic.twitter.com/4RU1FHRPA7

— روشنگر نسل سوخته (@roshangarnasl) January 21, 2020

Thanks to Customs and Border Protection, as well as the @DHSgov for their delicate work exposing individuals like Shahab Dehghani and preventing them from entries this country. Keep America, Americans, and #Iranian-Americans Safe. #DeportBasijis!

— Reza Behrouz (@RBehrouzDO) January 21, 2020

Close friend of #ShahabDehghani is Matin Moghaddas, who is another #Basij militiaman of #IRGC. He organized the protest over deportation of his close friend in #Boston. On his twitter account, Matin promotes terrorism and publishes tweets in support of #IRGC & #Soleimani! pic.twitter.com/vG1xUsefnf

— Babak Taghvaee – Μπάπακ Τακβαίε – بابک تقوایی (@BabakTaghvaee) January 21, 2020

If this guy is a Basij, it would explain why his background investigation for a student visa took about a year…it also illuminates the futility of doing a background check on a regime stooge when there is no actual way of doing a background check because the nation you’re dealing with is a terrorist state in a constant state of war with the United States. The revocation of the visa after it was granted only a week ago is not part of some grand scheme to exclude Iranians from studying here but speaks to some new intelligence about him or some new interpretation of existing information. It would also explain why the federal judge was so monumentally unconcerned about being ignored.

In the current state of affairs, I’m all for erring on the side of safety. If we’re wrong, this guy was mildly inconvenienced and a few lefties stroked out, and there is always an appeal and next year. But, if we’re right, the Iranian community in Boston is a lot safer and freer by his absence.