ICE arrested a supporter of President Donald Trump during its mass round up of Iranians over the weekend, boasting on social media that he was now being processed for deportation.
“We arrested Ribvar Karimi for an immigration violation June 22. He reportedly served as an IRANIAN ARMY SNIPER from 2018 to 2021,” announced ICE amid its mass arrest of Iranians in the United States following Trump’s bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities. “He had an Islamic Republic of Iran Army identification card in his possession when we arrested him! His failure to adjust his status from a K-1 visa makes him removable. He’ll stay off the streets — and in our custody — pending his removal proceedings.”
However, in a Wednesday interview with Newsweek, Karimi’s heavily-pregnant wife told the magazine her husband had supported Trump and his immigration policies and had prayed that the president would “free the Iranian people” from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s government.
“My husband himself even being from Iran supported Trump, his immigration policies and understood he was trying to protect the American people and was praying he helped free the Iranian people,” 30-year-old Morgan Karimi told Newsweek. “He believed in him as well. My husband is from the Kurdish region of Iran, where the people are good people and desperate for freedom from the regime.”
While Karimi was arrested for failing to adjust his immigration paperwork, his wife claimed that the documents “had been completed and ready to file,” and that they had been planning “to send it in” after she had given birth – a complicated pregnancy with health issues delaying them.
“This would be much easier to understand if there was a deadline issued for the adjustment of status, but there wasn’t. We thought we had time,” she told the magazine. “I am a rule follower and believe in doing the right thing. I never would’ve put my husband in this position especially this close to our child being born.”
Mrs. Karimi also claimed her husband’s mandatory military service was never hidden from U.S. immigration authorities and that his military card referenced by ICE had even been shown to officials.
“I am just so heartbroken and desperate to get my husband home before I give birth,” she said. “We believed in his [Trump’s] immigration policies and were completely blindsided and truly believed that only criminals were being detained. Everyone feels like a fool and regrets the decision.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told Newsweek in a statement that Karimi’s failure to adjust his paperwork made him “removable from the United States” and that the Trump administration would not “ignore the rule of law.”
Karimi was just one of 11 Iranians in the United States to be arrested by ICE over the weekend as the Trump administration joined Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran.
In press releases, the Trump administration highlighted Karimi’s former military service in an apparent attempt to make him look like a threat to U.S. national security.
