Dozens of Iranians and Iranian Americans report being detained at US border crossing

Savannah Behrmann | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Iranian Americans in LA speak out on death of General Qasem Soleimani Iranian Americans in Los Angeles discuss Qasem Soleimani's death. Editor’s note: The video was edited to remove a family who mistakenly appeared on camera.

WASHINGTON – After the airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, there were reports that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol detained dozens of people at the Blaine, Washington, port of entry over the weekend.

The Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement that it is "assisting more than 60 Iranians and Iranian-Americans of all ages who were detained at length and questioned at the Peace Arch Border Crossing."

"Many more were reportedly refused entry to the United States due to a lack of capacity for Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to detain them," the group said.

CBP refuted the reports in a statement: "Social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false. Reports that DHS/CBP has issued a related directive are also false."

More: What you need to know about the death of Gen. Soleimani and the escalating situation with Iran

Iranian-Americans say they were detained at border Civil rights groups and lawmakers demanded information from federal officials following reports that dozens of Iranian-Americans were held up and questioned at the border as they returned to the United States from Canada over the weekend (Jan. 6)

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement that the "reports are deeply alarming. Washingtonians, who happen to be Iranian-American, were detained at the Canadian-U.S. border because of their ethnicity or country of origin."

He said, "This is wrong and rife with constitutional and moral problems. No one should be treated differently due to where they come from, how they look or what language they speak." He said the CBP's "denial of these reports are simply not credible."

Washingtonians, who happen to be Iranian-American, were detained at the Canadian-U.S. border because of their ethnicity or country of origin.

@CBP’s denial of these reports are simply not credible.



These were detentions, and that is unacceptable. https://t.co/TE3Jx1rDbW pic.twitter.com/c7TUDNsOaE — Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) January 6, 2020

President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike that killed the Iranian regime's top general near Baghdad's airport last week. Iran vowed to retaliate for the killing of Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force.

Negah Hekmati, 38, an interior designer, was among those who claimed during a news conference in Seattle on Monday that they were detained by border authorities. Hekmati was born in Iran, moved to Canada and lives in the USA. She has citizenship in all three countries and was in Canada last week on a skiing vacation with her family, including her Iranian-born husband, who is a computer software engineer for Microsoft, and their children.

Hekmati says all her family members have U.S. passports.

She said they were driving back into the USA around midnight Saturday and used their NEXUS fast-access border crossing card and were taken aside for secondary inspection.

Hekmati said they were held in a room for five hours as CBP officers asked them repeated questions about their backgrounds. She said only Iranian Americans were pulled out for secondary inspection while everybody else sailed through. They had their belongings taken away, including passports and car keys, she said.

“As an immigrant, I’m used to it, unfortunately. But I'm here today because of my kids. They shouldn't experience such things,” Hekmati said. “We used to live in a country that freedom was not a very, very important thing. That’s the reason we moved to the U.S."

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Hekmati said her 5-year-old daughter pleaded with her to not speak Farsi so the agents wouldn't take her away.

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According to CBP, border wait times increased to an average of two hours Saturday evening at Blaine because of reduced staffing over the holiday season.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., rejected the claim about staffing issues.

“This appears to be another attempt to target and isolate a community that is very much part of our fabric, our social fabric. So the fears that these policies have brought and the discrimination that we once again are veering towards has deep roots in our history," Jayapal said at the news conference.

Jorge Baron, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, tweeted a thread of his experience at the border crossing after the reports of detainment.

"This evening I spoke to a permanent resident who spent 11 hrs at this 'secondary screening' overnight along w/ 40+ others. The only issue they all had in common … was their place of birth: Iran," one tweet reads.

Thread after spending this afternoon at @CBP

port of entry in Blaine, WA following up on reports of US citizens and permanent residents subjected to extensive questioning & delays. Bottom-line: despite CBP denials, this was definitely happening, though today was less egregious 1/ pic.twitter.com/2GxZ698hjY — Jorge L. Barón (@jorgebaron) January 6, 2020

Hekmati said she’s still proud of being a U.S. citizen but called the weekend’s incident an “unfortunate” reminder of prejudices.

Contributing: Alan Gomez