Americans woke up to a gutting example of Washington’s broken immigration priorities when video surfaced of Border Patrol agents hauling away Iranian Christian converts from a Los Angeles home — a scene filmed by Pastor Ara Torosian that quickly went viral and exposed a human tragedy at the center of our immigration system. The footage shows Marjan collapsing into a panic as her husband Reza is led away, and now comes word that Reza’s asylum claim has been denied and his removal is imminent.
Pastor Torosian, who fled persecution himself and recorded the arrests as they happened, has been sounding the alarm ever since, even staging a hunger strike at the White House to demand mercy for people fleeing religious persecution. The footage and the pastor’s testimony make it impossible to ignore the human toll of deporting people who converted to Christianity and fear brutal reprisals back in Iran.
Worse still, DHS posted on social media that the two were “unlawfully present” and flagged as “subjects of national security interest,” a blunt shrug from the authorities that does nothing to comfort refugees who say they entered under humanitarian programs and had work authorization. That claim by officials stands in stark contrast to the chaotic, emotional scene recorded by a pastor and witnessed by neighbors, and raises real questions about transparency and due process when so-called national security labels are attached.
The couple’s cases reportedly took wildly different paths after the arrests: Marjan was granted asylum in California, while Reza was detained in New Mexico and ordered removed to a third country — a dizzying inconsistency that should alarm every American who cares about the rule of law. If our system can grant protection to one spouse and turn the other over to a fate that could be life-threatening, then something is profoundly wrong with the way immigration adjudications are being handled.
This isn’t a partisan plea for open borders; it’s a plea for common-sense justice and for honoring America’s promise as a refuge for the oppressed. Conservatives who believe in religious liberty should be first in line to demand clearer standards, real accountability from DHS and ICE, and a return to an asylum system that actually protects persecuted Christians and other vulnerable people. The pastor’s public protest is a reminder that faith leaders must hold officials’ feet to the fire when lives are at stake.
Families are being shredded by bureaucratic roulette while administrations of both parties have outsourced mercy to an opaque process that too often seems indifferent to personal testimony, conversion, or genuine fear of persecution. Hardworking Americans who follow the rule of law want borders enforced, but they also expect the United States to keep its moral commitments — especially to those fleeing regimes that torture and imprison people for their faith.
Congress and the courts must step in and demand answers: who decided Reza’s fate, on what basis, and why was there such a jarring split in outcomes for a couple fleeing the same terror? Until our leaders put American principles ahead of political expediency, pastors like Torosian will keep watching their parishioners ripped away at the door, and ordinary citizens will rightly ask whether the country they love still stands for religious freedom and the protection of the innocent.
