The Trump administration has gone to war in Iran. And among the many rationales given is that, by “being beat to hell,” the Iranian regime will be weakened enough for a grassroots revolution to topple it.
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” President Trump said in February – adding, mysteriously, that it would “probably be your only chance for generations.”
I want to introduce you to someone who has already tried confronting Iran’s leadership — and barely escaped with his life.
This week, I talked to the lawyer for an Iranian man I’ll call Shayan. (Full disclosure: the lawyer is mentored by my colleagues at the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign.) Shayan took part in the mass protests in September 2022 against laws mandating that women wear hijabs and the punishment – including lethal beating – of women who violated those laws. Shayan got caught up in a mass arrest of protesters and was beaten in custody, but he was released after a few days. (Had Shayan still been in Iran during the protests last January, he might have been among the thousands of Iranians summarily shot.)
But after his arrest, Shayan was put on the government’s radar. When the regime found out that his small business had been organizing co-ed events – at which some women chose not to wear hijabs – they shut his business down; when they searched his phone and discovered he’d secretly converted to Christianity via an online church, they took him back into custody.
For four months, Shayan claims he was tortured: beaten, deprived of sleep, doused with cold water at random. When he was released, it was to a hospital, where he slowly recuperated from his injuries and illnesses. When he got his strength back, he used it to flee to the United States. After he left, the regime targeted his father in retaliation – which is why I’ve agreed to refer to him by a pseudonym here.
That was about a year and a half ago. Since his arrival at the U.S./Mexico border, Shayan has been held in immigration detention – he’s currently in a Mississippi facility. Last year, a judge approved his asylum claim. But the Trump administration is appealing the ruling, arguing that because he crossed into the U.S. without an appointment at a port of entry, he’s ineligible for asylum under a regulation the Biden administration instituted in 2023. (The judge found that he qualified for an exception to the regulation, for people who had exceptionally urgent reasons to enter the U.S. when they did.)
Unlike many detainees, Shayan’s lawyer says he’s never raised the possibility of giving up and accepting deportation in order to escape detention. If he had, he might have been on one of the three known deportation flights the Trump administration has sent to Iran. It’s perhaps worth noting that the Department of Homeland Security has the ability to designate Iran for Temporary Protected Status given the war, allowing Iranians in the U.S. to stay legally for six months or longer; this administration has given no indication they’re even considering it.
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One of the foundations of the modern (post-Holocaust) regime of refugee protection is that people are not their governments – and, conversely, that people do not have to remain under a government that’s willing to persecute or torture them.
But while that is a matter of international law (to which the U.S. is bound, by agreements it has signed and by the Refugee Act), it is hardly a foreign notion. It’s a foundational American belief.
For as long as America has been a country, its identity has been defined, in part, by being made up of the sort of people who’d be willing to leave home in search of a better life. (This is, of course, one of many American myths that conveniently ignores the existence both of the peoples who were here before European settlement and of the millions of people brought here against their will and in chains.) Shortly after the American Revolution, some optimists were already proclaiming that the new country would overtake Europe because it would siphon off the most vital and enterprising people, while their lazy cousins stayed at home.
In the twentieth century, as “economic migrants” became a less-sympathetic alternative to “refugees,” dissidents of governments the United States opposed were usually not just protected but feted. They were seen as fighting the good fight, even if they were doing so from the relatively safe perch of the United States.
I’m engaging in this historical detour because I want to remind you that this entire tradition has been paved over by the current administration, started in the president’s first term. What has replaced it is the paradigm of “shithole countries”: the idea that people who live in inferior places inevitably bring the failings of those places with them. And therefore, the United States must be extremely wary about allowing them to stay here at all.
At times, the Trump administration has attempted to put a positive spin on this: instead of seeking to come to the United States, would-be refugees should stick around and “make their countries great again.” As it happens, there is research suggesting that when supporters of democracy emigrate, authoritarianism becomes more entrenched in the countries they leave behind – “democracy drain,” like the “brain drain” of educated people to wealthier societies. But when it comes to an individual’s choice to stay or leave, the choice is rarely between fighting and fleeing, but between safety and death. Shayan couldn’t overthrow the Iranian regime from his prison cell or his hospital bed.
In practice, the “shithole countries” worldview undercuts any rhetoric about regime change: people, it implies, get the governments they deserve.
When pressed about the obvious racist implications here, supporters often claim that they’re not literally defending the gene pool of white America, but rather some set of American institutions that are derived from European traditions. But it’s much harder to get these supporters to acknowledge that anyone born in, say, Iran could ever fully adopt those institutions as his own. He has spent his time in detention learning English and studying the law around his case – showing respect for two of the institutions (the English language and the rule of law) most often touted as important for immigrants to not only adopt but respect.
你知道吗？非公民办理驾照时的这个错误可能会导致选民欺诈
None of it is enough for the government to stop trying to get him out of the United States – and to keep him behind bars in the meantime.
It seems silly to accuse this administration of hypocrisy, when they’ve hardly articulated a single consistent justification for the Iran war to begin with. But that throws into sharp relief the few things about which they are consistent. And this is one of them: the refusal to allow people like Shayan any identity or agency at all, beyond belonging to the country of their birth.
