07/10/2025
There’s incredible resources in this post, ways that all of us can help immigrants who are being unfairly. Targeted like the woman featured in the story.
In a powerful demonstration of collective action and solidarity, 64-year-old Madonna "Donna" Kashanian has been released from ICE detention and reunited with her family. After being snatched by three carloads of masked ICE agents as she was gardening at her New Orleans home on June 22, Donna is now back with her husband of 35 years, Russ Milne, and their daughter, Kaitlynn, thanks to an extraordinary grassroots effort that captured the attention of high-ranking officials. Hundreds of people contributed to a letter-writing campaign organized by Donna's friends and neighbors, including many A Mighty Girl supporters after our post and call to action on her behalf last week reached nearly 3 million readers.
These letters, which extolled Donna's decades of community service and care for her neighbors, helped get her case in front of top Trump administration officials. According to Donna's neighbor and longtime friend Connie Uddo, who helped organize the campaign, they received hundreds of letters in just a week. She noted that their congressman, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, "was inundated with phone calls and emails and said he had to take a look."
Congressman Scalise, who became a key ally in Donna's case, has committed to supporting her through the asylum application process. Scalise's willingness to intervene in Donna's case is a striking testament to the impact of coordinated grassroots advocacy when even one of the most hardline anti-immigrant representatives in Congress is moved to act due to community pressure. Scalise has repeatedly opposed "any form of amnesty" and claimed such programs "only encourage more illegal aliens to cross our borders and drain our nation's resources." Yet for Donna, Scalise said she "should be judged on her life's work, not on a mistake she might've made when she was 21 years old."
Donna came to the US legally on a student visa in 1978, when she was just 17. She tried to outstay her visa by seeking asylum after the anti-American Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution seized control of her home country in 1979. But court records show she was denied asylum in 1984 and lost her last appeal in 1993. Throughout her decades in America, Donna became deeply embedded in her New Orleans community, volunteering tirelessly with Habitat for Humanity to rebuild homes after Hurricane Katrina, working with the NOLA Tree Project to restore the urban landscape, and serving on her daughter's PTA from elementary through high school.
Despite her marriage to Russell, a U.S. citizen, in 1990, she was unable to obtain permanent residency. According to immigration records, her application was complicated by a brief previous marriage in the 1980s that, while Donna called it a youthful mistake, officials deemed fraudulent, effectively blocking her path to citizenship through her decades-long marriage to an American. Despite these setbacks, federal authorities granted her a "stay of removal" – an administrative reprieve that allowed her to remain in the country as long as she regularly reported to immigration officials. Donna was so meticulous about meeting this requirement that she once checked in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina when her family was displaced.
While we celebrate Donna's release after two weeks in ICE detention, we must remember that countless other immigrants face similar circumstances without the benefit of widespread support or political attention. The Trump administration has aggressively expanded immigration enforcement to include law-abiding immigrants like Donna, disregarding their long-time residence, family ties, community contributions, and previously granted administrative stays.
According to internal ICE data reported by The Independent, non-criminal ICE arrests jumped more than 800% since April, with only 30% of those in detention having criminal convictions. In May, Stephen Miller directed ICE to increase arrests to 3,000 per day, with officers instructed to "turn the creative k**b up to 11" in meeting detention targets.
Immigration attorney Homero López describes cases like Donna's as "low-hanging fruit as they seek to meet Trump's quotas." Although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem often touts that ICE officers are arresting the "worst of the worst," federal data shows this for the lie that it is. Government records reveal that the vast majority of those detained have no criminal history whatsoever, with the Cato Institute finding that 93% have no violent convictions.
With the tripling of ICE's budget in the massive spending bill signed last week by Trump, many tens of thousands more stories like Donna's will likely unfold in communities across the country in the months to come. With this tremendous victory, let's commit to standing up for other immigrants whose stories may not receive as much attention or garner as much support. Their lives and contributions to our communities are no less valuable, and they deserve the same compassion, dignity, and justice that we've fought for on Donna's behalf.
Thank you to everyone who answered our call to write letters on Donna's behalf and donate to her legal fund!
To help more immigrants who are under attack by the Trump administration, you can support the critical work of the National Immigrant Justice Center at https://immigrantjustice.org/ways-to-help/
To stay connected with A Mighty Girl, you can sign-up for our free weekly email newsletter at https://www.amightygirl.com/forms/newsletter
For children's books that encourage empathy and understanding of Mighty Girl immigrants of the past and present, visit our blog post, "A New Land, A New Life: 25 Mighty Girl Books About the Immigrant Experience" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12855
For books for children and teens about the importance of showing compassion and standing up for others, check out our blog post "60 Mighty Girl Books About Standing Up for Others" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=13481
To inspire children and teens with the true stories of women who stood up for women's rights and the rights of others throughout history, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
For empathy-building book for young kids about the importance of compassion and being kind to others, visit our blog post "25 Children's Books That Teach Kids to Be Kind," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=19359
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To read about how the Trump administration is now aggressively targeting immigrants with no criminal record, visit https://wapo.st/44cbBU2
