A University of Oklahoma professor arrested by immigration officials at an airport over the weekend has been released, marking the first publicly known instance of a tenure-track faculty member landing on ICE’s radar this year.
But it remains unclear why the professor, who is from Iran and has been teaching in the United States for over a decade, became a target.
Vahid Abedini, an assistant professor of Iranian studies, was en route to the annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Washington, D.C., on Saturday when he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, said Joshua Landis, co-director of the university’s Center for Middle East Studies.
After being held by the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement took custody of Abedini on Monday morning. In a LinkedIn post Tuesday, Abedini said he had been released the previous night.
“It was a deeply distressing experience, especially seeing those without the support I had,” Abedini wrote, expressing gratitude for the people who helped “resolve” his situation.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in an email Tuesday that Abedini “was detained for standard questioning.”
Landis, who was involved in Abedini’s hiring, said he was in the United States legally on an H-1B visa, which employers use to hire foreign workers with specialized skills.
Abedini specializes in elite politics and foreign policy. He was hired in June for a named professorship at the University of Oklahoma, after serving as a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. His position, along with those of several other Oklahoma faculty members, is sponsored by the Farzaneh family, who have donated millions of dollars to the university.
The university, Landis said, followed the hiring process with “great care”; his paperwork was “impeccable” and the university had applied for a visa for Abedini.
The university said in an email they didn’t have a comment on Abedini’s arrest and subsequent release.
Ian D. Wagreich, a lawyer who leads the immigration practice at Chicago-based Hinshaw & Culbertson, said detaining someone with a pending visa status is “disturbing” and “definitely not typical.”
While he stressed he didn’t know the exact details, Wagreich said it was likely the university had applied for an extension of the H-1B status, which grants a period of automatic employment authorization. During the time the extension is pending, a person is cleared to work and fly, he said.
The New York Times reported that police records show Abedini had received a speeding ticket in 2024.
‘Everybody’s Frightened’
The Trump administration has imposed new restrictions on international students and scholars, increasing vetting procedures for student visas and announcing a $100,000 one-time fee for any employer — including colleges — to hire foreign workers residing outside the United States.
That fee would not apply to Abedini, who began teaching as a graduate student at Florida International University in 2014 and has worked in the country ever since, according to his LinkedIn profile. Many young scholars come to the United States on a student visa and later transfer to a different status, like H-1B, to continue their academic careers here.
During his detainment, Abedini was in contact with several people, including family members and colleagues, two professors at the University of Oklahoma said. While Landis said it was possible that Abedini was racially profiled, another professor said Abedini told a colleague that agents had been at the airport specifically to detain him. That professor spoke on condition of anonymity, citing potential job repercussions.
Abedini is teaching two courses this semester — “the Global Politics of Oil,” and “Political Economy of Development” — according to the course catalog. He is also listed to teach one course, “Elite Politics in Iran,” in the spring. Both Landis and the other faculty member described Abedini in positive terms, with Landis describing him as a “wonderful” professor.
He said the department was “horrified” when they received the news of Abedini’s arrest. He underlined that Abedini was carrying out university business at the Middle East Studies Association’s conference.
“Nobody could figure out what he was being charged with,” Landis said. All they knew, Landis said, was he had been turned over from the sheriff’s office to ICE, and after the transfer they didn’t know the location.
Both faculty who spoke with The Chronicle said the university, which hasn’t put out a public statement, wasn’t communicating with concerned faculty either. They said they feared such an incident could happen again, noting that many professors in the College of International Studies are from other countries. One faculty member said the university administration seemed “risk-averse,” which she believed was “largely a product of being a flagship public university in a deep red state.”
Landis said news of Abedini’s release was a relief, though there was “an element of anxiety” that remained. His detainment is part of the “new normal,” he added.
“We live in times when everybody’s frightened that they could be arrested and that they’re going to get smacked,” Landis said.
