(15 Jan 2020) Iranian American activist Hoda Katebi rarely takes a break from organizing. As tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated in recent weeks, she became even busier.
On Sunday afternoon, she circled between monitoring her Twitter feed, taking phone calls, and texting via Signal, an encrypted messaging service: She and other organizers had word that an Iranian student was being detained at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.
Earlier this month, civil rights groups and lawmakers demanded information from federal officials following reports that dozens of Iranian Americans were held up and questioned at the border as they returned to the United States from Canada over the weekend.
The Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said more than 60 Iranians and Iranian Americans were detained and questioned for hours at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington. The delays followed security warnings that Iran might retaliate for President Donald Trump's decision to kill a top Iranian general earlier this month.
"This past week, I think I slept one night," Katebi said, who has been coordinating with Iranian Americans in the U.S. and also regularly checks in with family members and other close connections still in Iran.
"Iranians in Iran, I think particularly, just feel a sense of hopelessness because the conversation in the United States is, 'should we bomb Iran or should we not bomb Iran?' and in Iran, it's, 'should we kill these protesters or should we not kill these protesters?' So it's still Iranian people at the end of the day between a rock and a hard place," she said.
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