The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF) condemns President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban, announced on June 4, 2025. This sweeping proclamation is tearing apart Iranian American families and stigmatizing an entire community without justification. We urge the Administration to immediately rescind this unjust policy.

Iranian Americans are an integral part of this country—veterans, scientists, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and public servants. Our community contributes daily to American life and ranks among the most educated, civically engaged, and law-abiding in the nation. We embody the very American values of hard work, family, and faith in the nation’s future. To paint our community with the broad brush of suspicion not only dehumanizes patriotic Americans, it also undermines the inclusive ideals that make the United States strong.

The administration has claimed the ban is needed due to visa overstays and security risks – yet the data tell a very different story. Iranian visa holders have one of the lowest rates of overstays and national security concerns among immigrant communities, yet they are now being blocked across the board from entering the United States without cause or evidence.

Behind the statistics are real human beings – American families now facing separation, hardship, and trauma because of this policy. We need only recall the aftermath of the first travel ban in 2017 to know the devastating human impact of such blanket discrimination. Back then, Iranian American families were left in agonizing limbo: elderly parents barred from seeing their U.S. citizen children and grandchildren, spouses kept apart, and even urgent medical cases blocked from entry. These were the stories detailed in the Pars Equality Center’s amicus brief in Trump v. Hawaii, which four Supreme Court justices cited to expose the human toll of blanket bans. Justice Sotomayor called the waiver process a “sham,” noting that “waivers under the Proclamation are vanishingly rare.” That cruelty is back—with the stroke of a pen.

Beyond the legal harm, this policy betrays our national values. One inspiration for America’s ideals of religious freedom and pluralism derived from ancient Iranian principles—most notably, Cyrus the Great’s declaration of human rights. It is no coincidence that the Founders looked to that legacy in shaping a nation rooted in liberty and tolerance.

What America needs are smart, targeted policies—not sweeping bans that punish innocent families. If national security is the genuine priority, restrictions should target known affiliates of the Iranian regime—not students, scientists, or families pursuing education, opportunity, freedom, and reunion. Broad bans alienate allies and silence voices for freedom, while the affiliates of regime elites continue to travel freely, study here, and enjoy the very liberties their relatives deny at home. This is not security—it is injustice.

We call on Congress to immediately pass the NO BAN Act to prohibit future discriminatory bans based on religion or nationality. We also ask our fellow Americans to stand with us – speak out, support your neighbors, and insist that our country remains faithful to its highest values.