Dozens of Christians and other religious minorities from the Middle Eastern country have been on a resettlement roller coaster. It just took a new turn.
Around 100 Iranian refugees who were invited to resettle in the United States and then denied entry after a year of waiting in Vienna have a new hope.
A federal judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of California sided with the refugees, challenging the US government’s blanket denial that left them marooned in Europe—afraid to return to the country they fled and unable to proceed to the country that had offered them refuge.
In the refugees’ case, Doe v. Nielsen, Judge Beth Labson Freeman ordered the government to review its mass rejection of the Iranian religious minorities—most of whom are Christians. The refugees may now file appeals and, if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) still elects to refuse them entry, it must provide reasons for each individual separately.
“DHS retains an enormous amount of authority and discretion to adjudicate refugee applications,” the judge wrote in her decision, “but they do not have the discretion to violate the law.”
The law that initially granted passage from Iran to America is the Lautenberg Amendment, a decades-old policy facilitating the resettlement of persecuted religious minorities, especially Jews and Christians from the former Soviet Union. In 2004, the addition of the Specter Amendment added Iranian religious minorities to those eligible under the program.
“The US government had abandoned our Iranian refugee clients in a terrible, Kafkaesque situation,” said Mariko Hirose, litigation director for the International Refugee Assistance Project, which represented the plaintiffs alongside Latham & Watkins. “They had left their homes in Iran, sold their belongings, and traveled to Vienna with ...
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