A woman who was adopted as a young child by an American war veteran, who found her in the 1970s in an Iranian orphanage and raised her as a Christian, is threatened with deportation to Iran, a country known to be dangerous for Christians and now on the brink of war with the United States.
She is one of thousands of adoptees from abroad who never attained citizenship because of a break at the intersection of adoption and immigration law.
The woman, who The Associated Press is not naming because of her legal status, received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month ordering her to appear before a California immigration judge for removal proceedings.
She has no criminal record. The letter says she qualifies for deportation because she overstayed her visa in March 1974 when she was 4 years old.
“I never imagined it would get to where it is today,” the woman said, and she believes that, as a Christian and the daughter of a US Air Force officer, deportation to Iran could be a death sentence. “I’ve always told myself that there’s no way this country would send someone to their death in a country that left them an orphan. How could the United States do that?”
She added that the already terrifying prospect of deportation to Iran has become more dangerous in recent days, as the Trump administration began amassing the largest force of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, preparing for possible military action against Iran if talks over its nuclear program fail.
The Associated Press profiled the woman in 2024 as part of a story about the number of international adoptees left without citizenship because their American adoptive parents failed to naturalize them. The woman has been trying to rectify her legal status for years, so the Department of Homeland Security has been aware of her status since at least 2008. She believes their file on her is thousands of pages long. She doesn’t know what prompted the sudden threat of elimination.
The Trump administration has launched a mass deportation campaign, saying it is removing the “worst criminals.” But many were arrested without criminal records. The only interaction the woman can remember with law enforcement was being pulled over more than 20 years ago for using her phone while driving. She works in corporate health care, pays taxes and owns a home in California.
“When the media refuses to name names, it makes it impossible to provide details about specific cases or even verify that any of this occurred or even people 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 a detailed description of the letter she received, the reasons cited that made her eligible for deportation and the date of her order to appear in court, March 4.
A judge postponed the hearing until later next month and agreed with her lawyer, Emily Howe, to determine that the woman did not have to appear in person — a relief because they worried immigration officers were waiting in court to take her away.
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. He was captured in 1943 and held until the end of the war. When he retired from the Air Force, he worked as a government contractor in Iran, where he and his wife found her in an orphanage in 1972 and adopted her. She was two years old.
They returned to the United States in 1973, and the local newspaper ran a full-page story about the family and their new daughter. Her adoption was finalized in 1975. But at the time, the parents had to naturalize the children separately through the federal immigration agency. The woman’s parents have since died.
She did not know she had not been granted citizenship until she applied for a passport at the age of 38. She still does not know how this oversight happened. She searched her father’s papers and found a letter from a lawyer, dated 1975, saying he was working with immigration officials, “this matter seems to be over,” and billed her father for his services.
She did not keep her condition a secret. For years I have asked for help from everyone I can think of: the State Department, immigration officials, senators. I contacted my congressman, Rep. Yong Kim, a Republican from California, but to no avail. Recently, Kim’s office responded to her plea over her pending deportation by saying they were “unable to advise or intervene.”
“It baffles me that it is acceptable to send me to a foreign country where I will likely die or be imprisoned because of a clerical error,” she said.
More recent adoptees do not face this legal quandary: Congress passed a bill in 2000 aimed at correcting the problem and granting automatic citizenship to everyone legally adopted from abroad. But they did not make it retroactive, and it only applied to those who were under 18 when it came into effect; Not everyone born before the arbitrary date of February 27, 1983 was included.
The coalition is trying to protect senior adoptees
A bipartisan coalition — from the Southern Baptist Convention to liberal immigration groups — has since lobbied Congress to pass another bill to help older adoptees who were left out of the law, but Congress has not acted. Some of these lobbyists now say the administration’s threat to deport an adoptee is the exact scenario they worked hard to try to avoid.
“I’m horrified. It’s rare for me to be shocked by a story these days. But this is an absolutely unbelievable situation,” said Hannah Daniel, who, as public policy director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the lobbying arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, has begged lawmakers for years to address the issue.
International adoption has been a rare topic championed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Many Christian churches preach international adoption as a biblical vocation, a mirror of God’s welcoming of believers into the family of faith.
Danielle, who recently joined World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization, said the threat to send a Christian adoptee to Iran represents a collision between two issues she and many other Christians care deeply about: international adoption and the persecution of Christians around the world.
“That’s what’s most troubling to me about this: We are a nation that takes pride in fighting for religious freedom here and abroad,” Daniel said. “It is very contradictory to then say that we are going to send this person, who to me, is a sister in Christ to face the death penalty.”
She described it as “un-American and unreasonable.”
Converts to Christianity in Iran face severe discrimination
Some in Iran are Christians by birth and face widespread discrimination, said Ryan Brown, CEO of Open Doors, a non-profit organization that supports persecuted Christians around the world. But it is much worse for those who are considered converts to Christianity from Islam. He said he expects the deported adoptee will be viewed in that later category — as trans.
“It is assumed that you are an enemy of the state,” he said. “It is assumed that if you are a Christian, you are allied with the West and want to see the fall of the regime.” “There’s no benefit of extended doubt.”
Converted Christians are routinely arrested. Some are sentenced to death.
“Their prisons are world-famous for their appalling conditions,” Brown said.
There is no sanitation. Food, water and access to health care are scarce. Iranian prisons are “known to be nastier for women,” he said, and women have routinely reported being sexually assaulted by their captors. Others were forced to marry.
Brown, an adoptive father, struggled to even think about what a Christian woman accustomed to the freedom of the United States might face if she had to get off a plane into Iran. She doesn’t know the language. She knows nothing about her habits. She lived a very American life.
“I can’t even understand it,” Brown said. “My prayers are with her.”
The woman believes Iran will likely view her with more suspicion Due to her father’s military service and his work as a contractor for the US government.
She grew up listening to her father’s stories about the war. She read his diary he kept while in the prison camp, how he suffered from cold and hunger, and was proud of his sacrifices and service to a country she believed saved.
She said that when she’s sad or scared now, she looks at her favorite photo of him in his uniform, medals lined up on his left shoulder, and a slight, confident smile on his face.
She said: “I am proud of my father’s legacy. I am part of his legacy. What is happening to me is wrong.” “And I know he’s been here, and it’ll break his heart to know I’m on this path.”
