2 Iranian students challenge removal

Separate civil rights complaints say they were mistreated and illegally denied entry at Boston’s airport.

BOSTON — Two college students from Iran have filed civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, saying they were mistreated and illegally denied entry into the country by federal officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

Shahab Dehghani, who attends Northeastern University, and Reihana Emami Arandi, who was to start at Harvard, filed separate complaints with the agency’s civil rights office requesting investigations.

The students say federal officials detained and interrogated them for hours and concluded they planned on staying longer than their visas allowed. The students maintain they had no intention of overstaying.

“I couldn’t and still cannot believe how I was treated and why I received such behavior,” Arandi, a 35-yearold incoming graduate student at Harvard’s Divinity School, said in her complaint, filed Jan. 30. “I have never had any interest in or intention to stay in the U.S. for the long term.”

Arandi and Dehghani are among at least 10 Iranians denied entry since August. Seven of those had flown into Boston’s airport.

Spokespeople for Homeland Security didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.

In a complaint filed Monday, Dehghani’s lawyers say that he was admitted into the U.S. three times in recent years to study and that his most recent visa was issued after nearly a year of State Department vetting.

The 23-year-old economics and math student was also prevented from communicating with his attorneys during questioning and subjected to a “threatening and uncivil interrogation” that focused on his religious and political beliefs, according to the complaint.

Federal officials ignored an emergency court order staying his removal until the case could be heard in court and forced him to board a flight bound for Paris, his lawyers argue.

Civil rights groups say that Iranians have been targeted for extra screenings and interrogations at airports since President Trump issued a ban on travelers from several predominantly Muslim countries in 2017 and that the targeting has only worsened as U.S.-Iran relations have deteriorated, culminating in the U.S. drone strike that killed one of Iran’s top generals last month.