Iranian immigrant who has lived in New Orleans nearly 50 years arrested outside Lakeview home
The arrest highlights how Trump's immigration crackdown has ensnared people who were long allowed to stay in the U.S. as their cases unfolded.
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· Jun 25, 2025
Mandonna "Donna" Kashanian prepares food in her kitchen in the Navarre neighborhood of New Orleans.
An Iranian woman who has lived in the United States for 47 years and has no criminal record was detained by federal agents Sunday morning as she gardened outside her Lakeview home.
Mandonna "Donna" Kashanian, 64, was handcuffed and placed in the back of a pickup truck by agents who arrived in three unmarked vehicles, a witness said. She was transported to Hancock County, Mississippi, where she spent a night in the local jail before being moved to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile.
Kashanian came to the United States in 1978 on a student visa and eventually applied for asylum, but her claim was denied. Federal officials granted her a reprieve to stay in the country provided she follow the law and appear at regular immigration appointments. Family members say Kashanian never missed one of those appointments and has never been accused of a crime.
She remained in custody in Basile on Wednesday, federal records show.
Kashanian's arrest highlights how President Trump's widening immigration crackdown is, in part, focusing on people who were long allowed to stay in the United States while their immigration cases unfolded, but who now face detention and possible removal as federal officials scramble to meet the administration's ambitious deportation quotas.
"As long as she was reporting and abiding by the rules of this stay, we thought she would be able to, you know, live here in New Orleans with no problem," said Kashanian's husband, Russ Milne. Milne and the couple's 32-year-old daughter, Kaitlynn Milne, are both U.S. citizens.
Kashanian's detention came hours after U.S. military forces bombed targets inside her home country, part of an escalating conflict between Iran and Israel, a U.S. military ally.
Spokespeople for the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security and New Orleans' Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office did not respond to inquiries about the case. A DHS official, however, issued a statement on Tuesday touting arrests over the weekend of 11 Iranians in various U.S. cities, saying the arrestees had been accused of crimes including terrorism.
"We proactively deliver on President Trump’s mandate to secure the homeland," spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote.
Separately, at least one Iranian-born LSU student was detained by ICE in Baton Rouge, according to the agency's database. In New York, an Iranian man who had successfully petitioned for asylum and had no criminal record was taken into custody Monday, NBC news reported.
Kashanian had long argued to immigration officials that returning to Iran would put her in danger — and even before Saturday's bombing mission, she feared that her country's status as an enemy of the United States could imperil her efforts to stay, her husband said.
"We think what precipitated this action was, obviously, the events in the Middle East," Milne said.
Decades in Louisiana
Kashanian was 17 when she came to the United States, her husband said. When her student visa expired several years later, she applied for asylum. Her father had worked in Tehran as an engineer for the U.S.-backed Shah, whose regime toppled in 1979, and Kashanian feared retribution if she returned, her husband said.
While her asylum application wound its way through the courts, Kashanian built a life in New Orleans. She tended bar in the French Quarter, where she met Milne, who managed a restaurant where Kashanian would kill time after shifts. The two married in 1990.
Kashanian's application was rejected by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals over a decade later, but federal authorities granted her a "stay of removal" — an administrative reprieve handed out at immigration officials' discretion under which they agree not to deport someone provided they appear as ordered for immigration check-ins.
Kashanian never missed one of those meetings, according to her husband.
Her roots in New Orleans deepened over the following 25 years. She volunteered for Habitat for Humanity after Hurricane Katrina, building homes in the hard-hit 7th Ward and Chalmette — and rebuilding her own, which flooded badly in the landmark storm. She worked as a caregiver for the elderly and cooked for neighbors, sharing her feats on a YouTube channel dedicated to traditional Persian cooking. She joined the parent-teacher association at the schools her daughter attended.
"She’s always worked, she’s had a driver’s license, she has a social security card, she’s paid taxes," Milne said. "She’s about to qualify for Medicare. She’s been a contribution to the community for her whole life."
Milne said Kashanian expressed anxiety over the years about her immigration status. She tried to apply for a green card under a program for spouses of U.S. citizens, but was rejected due to a previous marriage she had in the 1980s that officials had deemed fraudulent, her daughter said. Kashanian's fear sharpened when Trump took office following a campaign where he promised to round up and deport millions.
Homero López, a New Orleans-based immigration attorney and former immigration judge, said agents are increasingly arresting people who have long complied with immigration check-ins, including those with stays of removal.
Rather than a legally binding order, the administrative measure Kashanian was living under is imposed at ICE's discretion. Trump's administration is revoking many of them.
"Those cases are low-hanging fruit as they seek to meet Trump's quotas," he said.
A familiar pattern
Witnesses described Kashanian's arrest as following a familiar pattern under Trump's immigration crackdown — plainclothes agents, wearing body armor but without identifiable agency insignia, handcuffing people before placing them into unmarked vehicles and transporting them to detention facilities.
Kashanian's next-door neighbor, Sarah Gerig, said her friend's arrest took less than a minute.
"She was able to say, ‘find my husband and tell him what happened,'" Gerig said. "The ICE agent gave my husband a thumbs-up and got in the car and zoomed off."
The family got a brief call from Kashanian later that day as she was being processed at the ICE office in downtown New Orleans. A federal agent was present on the other end of the line, Kaitlynn Milne said, but declined to answer when the family asked if he had a judge's warrant for her mother's arrest.
The family didn't hear from Kashanian again until Tuesday, when she called from Basile. She said the privately-contracted ICE facility is relatively clean and well-maintained.
For two days, Milne and his daughter, with the help of Gerig, have made calls and pored over files at the family's dining room table as they struggled to find an immigration lawyer — the result of what attorneys describe as a lack of enough litigators to meet Louisiana's large number of people in ICE detention.
Kashanian's detention drew criticism Wednesday from her representative on the New Orleans City Council, Joe Giarrusso.
"I usually don’t comment on federal issues but this is a local issue, too," said Giarrusso, a Democrat. "Someone living here with the federal government’s full knowledge and approval for nearly 50 years is hardly public enemy number one. This should not happen."
López, the immigration attorney and former judge, said the conflict with Iran could present a possible new argument for Kashanian to fight her deportation in immigration court. But he also noted that the Trump administration won a victory before the U.S. Supreme Court this week when the high court ruled that it could deport migrants to places other than their countries of origin in some cases.
In the highest-profile example, officials flew hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador earlier this year.
"We’re extremely scared," Russ Milne said.
James Finn covers politics for The Times-Picayune | Nola.com. Email him at jfinn@theadvocate.com.