Iranian Christian who came to US as an adopted orphan fears deportation would be a death sentence
Quick Summary
- An Iranian-born Christian woman fears that deportation to Iran would put her life in danger.
- She entered the U.S. at age 4, but a legal loophole makes it difficult for her to become a citizen.
- Advocates highlight her case as part of a larger issue affecting international adoptees without citizenship.
An Iranian-born Christian woman who entered the United States as a young child says deportation proceedings against her could amount to a death sentence if she is forced to return to Iran. The case involves a decades-old citizenship gap affecting some international adoptees who were raised in the U.S. yet never formally naturalized.
The woman, adopted by an American Air Force veteran at age 2 after he found her in an Iranian orphanage in the early 1970s, recently received a Department of Homeland Security letter ordering her to appear for removal proceedings in California, the Associated Press reports.
The woman’s name has been withheld because of her legal situation. The agency determined she is eligible for deportation because her visa expired in March 1974, when she was 4 years old.
“I never imagined it would get to where it is today,” the woman told the news agency. She warned that deportation to Iran could be fatal because of her Christian faith and her father’s U.S. military ties.
“I always told myself that there is no way that this country could possibly send someone to their death in a country they left as an orphan. How could the United States do that?” she asked.
She has no criminal record and works in corporate health care, pays taxes and owns a home in California. The only law enforcement interaction she recalls is a traffic stop two decades ago for using her phone while driving.
Her hearing was recently postponed to next month after an immigration judge agreed with her attorney, Emily Howe, that she does not need to appear in person, easing fears that immigration officers might detain her at the courthouse.
Advocates say tens of thousands of international adoptees in the United States have never received citizenship because an earlier law required parents to complete a separate naturalization process after adoption. The woman discovered the oversight in her own case only at age 38 while applying for a passport.
Her adoptive parents, who have since died, returned with her to the U.S. in 1973 after adopting her the previous year in Iran. Although the adoption was finalized in 1975, her citizenship status remained unresolved.
For years, she has sought help from federal agencies and lawmakers, including Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif. Her case resurfaced as the administration has pursued deportation efforts, even as Trump administration officials publicly frame their mass deportation policy as targeting dangerous criminals.
The legal gap affecting older adoptees traces back to the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, which granted automatic citizenship to many foreign-born adoptees but applied only to those under 18 at the time and born after Feb. 27, 1983. Advocates have since pushed Congress to extend protections to those excluded. Last year, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers introduced the Protect Adoptees and American Families Act, which would grant U.S. citizenship to international adoptees who were legally adopted in the U.S. but aren't citizens because of a loophole in the Child Citizenship Act of 2000.
Hannah Daniel, formerly the director of public policy for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, has for years pressed lawmakers to address the issue, saying the woman's situation is an example of the precise risk she and others have warned about.
“I’m horrified,” Daniel told AP, calling the case “an absolutely unbelievable situation.” She later described the prospect of deportation as “un-American and unconscionable.”
Ryan Brown, chief executive officer of the Christian advocacy group Open Doors, warned that Iranian authorities often treat converts to Christianity as security threats aligned with Western governments.
“It is assumed that you are an enemy of the state,” Brown was quoted as saying.
A joint report by Article 18, Open Doors, Christian Solidarity Worldwide and Middle East Concern has documented intensifying pressure on Christians in Iran. The study reported that 254 Christians were arrested for their faith last year and that charges frequently relied on provisions criminalizing religious activity deemed contrary to Islam.
The report said 43 Christians remained imprisoned at the end of 2025 and 16 others were in pretrial detention. Sentences also grew harsher, with total prison terms reaching about 280 years in 2025 compared with about 263 years the previous year.
Iran ranks 10th on the Open Doors 2026 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. The organization estimates that about 800,000 Christians live in Iran’s population of more than 92 million.
Advocates have raised an alarm in the last year about efforts to deport other Iranian and Afghan Christians despite the risks of persecution they face if they are returned.
Deportation efforts against members of his California church spurred Evangelical Pastor Ara Torosian, who fled from Iran himself, to speak out after a viral video circulated online purporting to show one woman having a panic attack as officers arrested her husband on the street, a few blocks away from the church.
"I believe that America is better than this," Torosian stressed in an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times. "This behavior reminds me disturbingly of what I fled in Iran. But I know that most Americans do not support this, nor do most fellow evangelical Christians: Many evangelicals voted for Trump because he pledged to protect persecuted Christians — not to deport them."
