UPDATE: Nov. 25 — In a LinkedIn post early Tuesday morning, Vahid Abedini said he had been released from custody. “I’m relieved to share that I was released from custody tonight,” the professor wrote. “It was a deeply distressing experience, especially seeing those without the support I had. My sincere thanks to my friends and colleagues at the University of Oklahoma, the Middle East Studies Association, and the wider Iran studies and political science community for helping resolve this.”
Separately, an unidentified DHS spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement later Tuesday morning: “This Iranian national was detained for standard questioning. He’s been released.”
PREVIOUSLY:
A University of Oklahoma professor of Iranian studies was detained by immigration authorities over the weekend while traveling to an academic conference in Washington, D.C.
Vahid Abedini was booked into the Logan County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday and was released to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Oklahoma City field office Monday morning, Maj. Randy Lester of the sheriff’s office, told HuffPost. Lester did not provide any more information on the nature of Abedini’s stay at the jail, nor why he was transferred to ICE custody.
“He was just returned to immigration this morning,” Lester said. “We’re just temporary housing for immigration.”
The sheriff’s office has a cooperation agreement with ICE that authorizes it to briefly hold immigration detainees, Lester said. A virtual record on VINELink ― a digital database used by many local law enforcement offices to display detainee information ― similarly showed that Abedini had been in the county’s custody before being transferred to an undisclosed facility.
A friend of Abedini’s, who asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the matter, told HuffPost she had spoken to Abedini on Monday after he had been transferred out of the county jail. Abedini was in immigration custody, the friend said, though it wasn’t precisely clear where. Earlier, the professor had managed to contact the hotel hosting the academic conference, and word about his detention had spread from there, the friend said.
“He seems to be in good spirits,” the friend said. “He has access to basic essential items like towels and blankets.”
The friend said it wasn’t completely clear whether Abedini was still in the same facility, and that he may have been moved again Monday.
A spokesperson for the University of Oklahoma told HuffPost on Monday that it “does not have a comment” on the detention. Neither the State Department nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to requests for comment.
As of Monday night, ICE’s online detainee locator had an entry for Abedini, saying he was in ICE custody and listing his birthplace as Iran. It did not list his current whereabouts, saying instead to “call ICE for details.” That phrase has come to represent just how hard it is to locate an individual in ICE custody; immigration detainees are frequently transferred between facilities, and reaching them can be difficult.
Abedini teaches at the University of Oklahoma’s Boren College of International Studies and is the Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies there.
Joshua Landis, a professor of Middle East Studies at the university, asserted in an X post Monday that Abedini had been “wrongfully detained” while on his way to the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).
“Obviously, all of the Middle East scholars are horrified,” Landis told HuffPost Monday, after noting that “everybody began to ask why” Abedini had not shown up to the meeting.
Vali Nasr, a Johns Hopkins University professor attending MESA, said the news was especially chilling for younger scholars.
“The fact that there’s no discernment [by U.S. authorities] is very worrisome,” Nasr said. He called Abedini “a fine young scholar” who had secured an endowed chair position after OU conducted a wide search.
Landis, who is also director of OU’s Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies, said the professor had previously been employed by the University of Arkansas and had moved to the University of Oklahoma over the summer. Abedini was on a valid H1-B visa, Landis said, though he noted that he was not an immigration attorney.
“We have a bevy of lawyers, and we know he has all his ducks in a row,” Landis said, adding that he was not speaking for the university. “He’s only been here for one semester, poor guy. He has been a great member of the community; students like him a lot. He was going off to do his scholarly best at the MESA [meeting]. He’s done everything right.”
“He is very pro-America, let me just make that clear,” Landis added of his colleague. “He loves America.”