Alireza Doroudi, the UA doctoral student detained by ICE last month, has a new bond hearing scheduled for Thursday at 3 p.m.
Doroudi has been held in the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center since March 28, after being held at the Pickens County Jail on no charges.
A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security previously said Doroudi “posed significant national security concerns,” but declined to elaborate.
According to AL.com, attorneys for DHS told a judge Monday that they are “currently not able to provide evidence showing Alireza Doroudi is a national security concern.”
In a statement to WVTM 13, an attorney representing Doroudi said that immigration Judge Maithe González requested additional information from both parties before making a decision.
“Please note that late last week, most immigration master hearings — including Mr. Doroudi’s — were canceled in favor of individual hearings. A date for Mr. Doroudi’s individual hearing has not yet been confirmed,” the statement read.
Individual hearings are different from bond hearings. In individual hearings, a judge determines whether to grant relief from removal or order deportation.
Doroudi is currently being held in the same detention facility as Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University who is a legal, permanent resident in the United States. Khalil was detained March 8 after helping lead the pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia.
Students for Justice in Palestine at UA, the student group that has led many of the pro-Palestine rallies at the University, said that Doroudi “was not involved, nor has he ever been involved in any organizing or protests related to our organization.”
“I think in some instances we can say that this is a political retaliation against individuals who do not share the Trump administration’s dominant ideology,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University. “But in other instances, we’re seeing no indication of any kind of overt political activism, simply perhaps some political tension between the two countries.”
