A U.S. Army veteran discovered a woman as a toddler in an Iranian orphanage in the 1970s and raised her as a Christian. The woman is facing deportation to Iran, a country so dangerous for Christians that it is on the brink of war with the United States.
She is one of thousands of people adopted from abroad who never received citizenship because of the intersection of adoption and immigration laws.
The AP is not naming the woman because of her legal situation. Earlier this month, she received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security ordering her to appear before an immigration judge in California for deportation proceedings. She has no criminal record. The letter said she was eligible for deportation because she overstayed her visa in March 1974, when she was 4 years old.
“I never thought things would get to where they are today,” the woman said. She believes that as a Christian and the daughter of a U.S. Air Force officer, being deported to Iran could be a death sentence. “I always tell myself, there’s no way this country would send someone to die in a country they left as an orphan. How could the United States do that?”
The dire prospect of being deported to Iran has become more dire in recent days, she said, as the Trump administration began assembling the largest concentration of U.S. warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, preparing for military action against Iran if talks over its nuclear program failed.
The Associated Press reported on the woman in 2024 as part of a story about how many international adoptees had lost their citizenship because their U.S. adoptive parents failed to naturalize them. The woman has been trying to correct her legal status for years, so DHS has been aware of her situation since at least 2008. She guessed their file on her was thousands of pages long. She didn’t know what prompted the sudden threat of eviction.
The Trump administration has been launching a massive deportation campaign, claiming it is deporting the “worst” criminals. But many people with no criminal records have been swept up. The only interaction the woman remembers with law enforcement was when she was pulled over for using a cell phone while driving more than 20 years ago. She works in corporate health care, pays taxes and owns a home in California.
“When the media refuses to name names, it becomes impossible to provide details about a specific case or even verify whether it happened or whether these individuals exist. If you can’t do your job, we can’t do ours,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote in a statement. The AP did not provide them with the woman’s name but sent them a detailed description of the letter she received, the grounds on which she qualifies for deportation and the date she was ordered to appear in court, March 4.
A judge adjourned the hearing until later next month and agreed with her lawyer, Emily Howe, that the woman would not have to appear in person – a relief for those who had feared immigration officials would be waiting at the courthouse to remove her.
She was adopted in Iran when she was two years old
The woman’s father was a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II, captured in 1943 and held until the end of the war. After retiring from the Air Force, he worked as a government contractor in Iran before he and his wife found her in an orphanage in 1972 and adopted her. She was 2 years old.
When they returned to the United States in 1973, the local newspaper gave a full-page story about the family and their new daughter. Her adoption was finalized in 1975. But at the time, parents had to naturalize their children individually through federal immigration agencies. The woman’s parents are now deceased.
It wasn’t until she applied for a passport at the age of 38 that she learned that she had not yet been naturalized. She still doesn’t know how this oversight occurred. She searched her father’s files and found a letter from a lawyer, dated 1975, saying he was cooperating with immigration officials and “it appears the matter is closed” and charging her father a fee for his services.
She kept her condition secret. For years, she sought help from everyone she could think of: the State Department, immigration officials, senators. She contacted Republican Congresswoman Young Young Kim of California, but to no avail. Recently, King’s office responded to her request regarding her impending deportation, saying they were “unable to provide advice or intervention.”
“It baffles me that it’s OK to send me to a foreign country where I could die or be jailed for a clerical error,” she said.
More modern adoptees don’t face this legal dilemma: Congress passed a bill in 2000 that aimed to correct the problem and grant automatic citizenship to all people legally adopted from abroad. But they are not retroactive and only apply to people under 18 when they come into effect; everyone born before February 27, 1983, an arbitrary date, is not included.
Coalition seeks to protect elderly adoptees
A bipartisan coalition from the Southern Baptist Convention to liberal immigration groups has since been lobbying Congress to pass another bill to help elderly adoptees avoid legal sanctions, but Congress has yet to act. Some of these lobbyists say the government’s threat to deport adoptees now is exactly what they are trying to avoid.
“I was shocked. It’s not often I’m shocked by a story these days. But this was absolutely an unbelievable situation,” Hannah Daniel said. She has been pleading with lawmakers for years to address the issue as public policy director for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s lobbying arm.
Intercountry adoption has been a rare topic supported by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Many Christian churches promote intercountry adoption as a biblical calling and a mirror of God’s welcome of believers into the family of faith.
Danielle, who recently joined the Christian humanitarian organization World Aid, said the threat to send a Christian adoptee to Iran represents a conflict between two issues that are close to her heart and those of many other Christians: international adoption and the persecution of Christians around the world.
“This is the most disturbing thing to me: We are a country that prides itself on fighting for religious freedom at home and abroad,” Daniel said. “It felt completely opposite to the fact that we were sending this person, who was a sister in Christ to me, to face the death penalty.”
She called it “un-American and unreasonable.”
Iranian converts to Christianity face severe discrimination
Ryan Brown, CEO of Open Doors, a nonprofit that supports persecuted Christians around the world, said some Iranians are born Christians and face widespread discrimination. But for those thought to be converts from Islam to Christianity, the situation is much worse. He said he expected deported adoptees to be considered the latter category – converts.
“People will think you are an enemy of the state. People will think if you are Christian you are aligned with the West and want to see the regime overthrown,” he said. “Doubt does no good.”
Christian converts were frequently arrested. Some were sentenced to death.
“Their prisons are world-famous for their deplorable conditions,” Brown said.
No sanitary conditions. Food, water and medical services are scarce. He said Iranian prisons were “even more vicious for women” and that women often reported being sexually assaulted by their captors. Others were forced into marriage.
Brown, an adoptive father himself, had a hard time even imagining what a Christian woman accustomed to America’s freedoms might go through if she had to step off a plane and travel to Iran. She doesn’t understand the language. She knew nothing of the customs there. She lived a completely American life.
“I can’t even fathom this,” Brown said. “I pray for her.”
The woman believed Iran might be more suspicious of her given that her father had served in the military and worked as a U.S. government contractor.
She grew up hearing her father’s war stories. She read the diary he wrote while in the prisoner of war camp and learned how cold and hungry he was, and she was proud of his sacrifice and his service to the country she believed had saved her.
She said when she feels sad or scared now, she looks at her favorite photo of him in uniform, medals lining his left shoulder and a small, confident smile on his face.
“I’m proud of my dad’s legacy. I’m part of his legacy. And what happened to me was wrong,” she said. “I know he’s here and it would break his heart if he knew I was on this road.”
