Customs and Border Protection Deports a Possible Iranian Regime Enforcer Despite a Federal Judge's Order

Image by WikimediaImages from Pixabay

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.

Advertisement

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.

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:

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.

Advertisement

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

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement