Donna Kashanian was just gardening.
It was a Sunday morning in New Orleans, June 22, 2025. She was 64 years old, a staple of the Lakeview neighborhood for decades, and suddenly, she was gone. Plainclothes agents in unmarked cars pulled up, handcuffed her, and whisked her away while her husband was still asleep inside.
The Donna Kashanian immigration release didn't happen by accident. It took a massive community effort, political heavyweights, and a bit of a media firestorm to get a grandmother back to her backyard. Honestly, her story is a wild look at how fast life can change when geopolitics and immigration policy collide.
The Morning Everything Changed
You’ve probably seen the headlines. Mandonna "Donna" Kashanian had lived in the U.S. for 47 years. She arrived in 1978 on a student visa when she was just 17. Then the Iranian Revolution happened. The world flipped upside down, and she never went back.
For years, she lived in a sort of legal limbo. She had no criminal record. She checked in with ICE regularly—she even checked in from South Carolina while displaced by Hurricane Katrina. She was the person who painted reading nooks for school libraries and volunteered for Habitat for Humanity.
But on that June morning, the timing was brutal. It was the day after U.S. forces had bombed targets in Iran. Suddenly, the "stay of removal" she’d relied on for decades didn't seem to matter as much as the political climate of the moment.
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Why the Donna Kashanian Immigration Release Was So Complicated
The legal side of this is kind of a mess.
Back in her 20s, Donna tried to get a green card through a marriage that she later admitted was a sham. She got divorced, but that one mistake followed her for nearly half a century. Even though she’s been married to her current husband, Russ Milne, for 35 years, a federal court ruled in 2001 that the old fraud permanently disqualified her from ever getting legal status through marriage.
It didn't matter how "bona fide" her current family was. The law was the law.
The Advocacy Wave
When she was taken to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, her family didn't just sit there. Her daughter, Kaitlynn Milne, and her husband started a grassroots campaign.
They gathered over 200 letters in a single week.
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Neighbors, teachers, and local leaders wrote about her "good moral character"—a phrase that actually carries weight in immigration court. These weren't just "she's nice" letters; they were testimonials of a life spent serving a city that had been through hell and back.
How the Politics Played Out
This is where it gets interesting.
The Donna Kashanian immigration release eventually caught the attention of big names. U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise got involved. So did Louisiana State Representative Stephanie Hilferty.
It’s not every day you see high-ranking Republicans pushing for the release of an undocumented person during a nationwide crackdown. But Kashanian wasn't just a "case number" to them; she was a constituent's wife and a community pillar.
Scalise’s office reportedly worked behind the scenes with Trump administration officials to get her file reviewed. They argued she should be judged on her "life’s work" rather than a decades-old deportation order.
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By July 7, 2025, she was finally released.
What’s Next for Donna?
The release was a huge win, but she isn't "legal" yet.
The Department of Homeland Security was pretty blunt about it. A spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, noted at the time that the "facts of the case have not changed" and that she had "exhausted all legal options."
Basically, she’s back home, but the threat hasn't vanished. Her legal team is now looking into whether changes in asylum laws or new pathways to residency can help her stay permanently.
Lessons from the Case
If you’re following this because you’re worried about similar situations, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Documentation is everything. Donna’s family struggled because some of her documents had been lost over 40 years of moving through different offices.
- Community ties matter. In "discretionary" cases, your reputation and your service to the community are often the only things that can stall a deportation.
- Check-ins aren't a guarantee. Even if you’ve never missed an appointment in 20 years, a shift in federal policy can change your status overnight.
The Donna Kashanian immigration release shows that even in a strict enforcement era, individual advocacy can still move the needle. For now, she’s back in New Orleans, probably tending to her garden, while the lawyers figure out the next move.
If you’re navigating the immigration system, the best first step is to secure a specialized attorney who can review old "stays of removal." Many people assume they are safe because they've been allowed to stay for years, but as this case proved, those protections are often temporary and subject to the political winds of the day. Keeping a "preparedness folder" with evidence of community service, tax records, and letters of support is a practical move for anyone in a similar legal gray area.