Wednesday, February 25, 2026- A woman in her 50s living in California is now at the center of a troubling immigration case that has shocked advocates and the public alike — decades after she was brought to the United States as a toddler, adopted by an American veteran.
The Department of Homeland Security recently sent her a notice initiating deportation proceedings, saying she is eligible for removal because her visa technically expired in March 1974, when she was just four years old. She has no criminal record and has lived her entire life in the U.S., yet immigration authorities now view her as an immigrant subject to deportation.
Her situation stems from a legal quirk: at the time she was adopted from an Iranian orphanage in the early 1970s by an American Air Force veteran, adoptive parents had to separately apply for naturalization for their child.
Her adoptive parents believed they completed that process, but federal records show they did not. Because the 2000 Child Citizenship Act, which grants automatic citizenship to many adoptees, wasn’t made retroactive in her case, she was never legally naturalized. She only discovered the issue decades later while trying to get a passport.
Now facing possible removal to Iran — a nation ranked among the most dangerous for Christians and one she left as a young child — she fears for her life, citing both her faith and her late father’s U.S. military ties as reasons the return could be perilous.
Her legal team and supporters argue this case highlights deep flaws in U.S. immigration and adoption laws, especially as thousands of other international adoptees could be in similar limbo. A hearing is scheduled before an immigration judge in the coming weeks as the community watches closely.
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