An Aroostook County mother and family physician is seeking to return to the United States after being denied reentry at the Canadian border earlier this year.
In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, the plaintiff goes by the pseudonym Roya Afshar. After briefly exiting and reentering the United States at the Fort Fairfield port of entry to obtain a stamp on her visa, she was wrongfully denied reentry by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the complaint says.
That was in April, and Afshar is still in Canada, “leaving her separated from her home, family, patients, clothing and possessions, and threatening to bar her returning to the life she had lawfully and responsibly built in Maine,” the complaint states.
The complaint requests the court find the grounds of Border Patrol’s denial to be “unlawful, arbitrary and capricious,” and cover attorney fees and other compensation deemed just. It names CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and Derrick Stamper, chief patrol agent of Border Patrol’s Houlton Sector, as defendants.
An attorney at Bernstein Shur who is representing Afshar clarified details of the complaint but declined to comment further. Spokespeople for DHS and Border Patrol did not reply to requests for comment Tuesday.
Afshar is a family physician who “built a home and life” with her family in Presque Isle after entering the United States legally in 2022, according to the complaint.
Afshar, 52, was born and raised in Iran, where she and her family have long been in strong opposition to the ruling regime, according to the complaint. It says Afshar “fled to Canada in 2008 and has no intention of returning to Iran.” Afshar is a citizen of both Iran and Canada, according to court documents, and entered the U.S. with an H-1B nonimmigrant visa, which was renewed in November.
The complaint says that Afshar went to the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles to renew her driver’s license early this year, but was told the bureau’s records did not reflect that her visa had been renewed. That was still the case about two months later, according to the complaint.
On April 8, Afshar sought to obtain a visa stamp in hopes that it would trigger an update in the BMV’s records. She briefly entered Canada at the Fort Fairfield port of entry, according to the complaint, before turning around to request the stamp from Border Patrol officers.
Afshar presented her renewed visa and a valid Canadian passport, which the lawsuit argues is enough to permit entry into the United States. But the complaint alleges that Afshar was instead held at the Fort Fairfield port of entry for about 10 hours, during which time she was questioned extensively on her family’s ties to Iran.
Afshar was eventually informed she was inadmissible to the United States, and the complaint claims she was not permitted to contact an attorney. She was released into Canada that night.
The lawsuit claims that Border Patrol denied Afshar entry based on Terrorism-Related Inadmissibility Grounds, but the agency has not disclosed what provision of TRIG it applied in that decision. It says it’s believed CBP wrongfully concluded that Afshar was inadmissible because her mother previously worked for the Iranian government.
The lawsuit claims that provision does not apply to Afshar, as her mother’s work for the government was 45 years ago, decades past a five-year provision, and she worked for a non-military agency.
It also emphasizes that Afshar and her family have become established members of their community in Maine, with both her and her husband providing healthcare in a medically underserved area while living with their 12-year-old daughter in Presque Isle.