In December 2019, Mohammad Elmi, an Iranian national, traveled to Los Angeles to begin a PhD program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But upon trying to enter the US, Elmi was stopped by US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) and searched and repeatedly questioned for hours. His wife, Shima Mousavi, who is pursuing a master’s degree in California, waited near the airport for eight hours before her phone rang. “I’m so sorry,” Elmi told her. “They are sending me back to Iran.”

The Guardian reported last year that US authorities were increasingly stopping Iranian students from entering the US, and in recent months, a growing number of Iranians with valid student visas have been refused entry, with some barred from returning to the US for years. Since August, at least ten students have been sent back to Iran upon their arrival, the Guardian reports. This is in addition to reports that dozens of Iranian nationals and those of Iranian descent were held for hours at Washington State’s border with Canada.

According to the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA), a not-for-profit advocacy organization, Iranian students have faced increased difficulties over the past few months as tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated. Ali Rahnama, an attorney for PAAIA, said: “The number of cases we hear about from other communities does not compare to what’s happening to Iranians.” Nate Peeters, a CBP spokesperson, said in a statement that “CBP has understood Iran and its proxies to be a very capable adversary for some time” and that the agency “is operating with an enhanced security posture.”

In preparing for his move to California, Elmi had left his job and gone through his savings, planning to live off his new teaching and research assistant position. Now he is thousands of miles from his wife, broke, and unsure of what to do next. Elmi tells the Guardian: “They destroyed us.”