A Maine doctor who has been stuck in Canada for more than two months after being denied reentry by U.S. Customs and Border Protection was identified Friday in a court filing by her attorneys.
Dr. Behnoosh Dashti, a physician at Northern Light A.R. Gould Hospital in Presque Isle, is suing Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and two other border protection officials, seeking to overturn the border protection determination that she can’t return to the U.S.
Dashti, a Canadian citizen who was born in Iran, had originally filed the lawsuit under a pseudonym, but an amended complaint filed in federal court Friday used her real name.
Dashti is the only family medicine provider in the women’s health practice at A.R. Gould Hospital. Her inability to return to work leaves patients in limbo. She has lived in Presque Isle and worked at the hospital since 2022, her attorneys said in the complaint.
“We strongly disagree with the treatment of our colleague and continue to work diligently through diplomatic and legal channels to ensure her safe and expedient return,” Suzanne Spruce, senior vice president at Northern Light Health said in a statement.
“Being denied reentry to the country continues to present extreme hardship for her family, her patients who have had their care disrupted, and her coworkers, who have been providing coverage in her absence, Spruce said. “This physician is a valued member of the community and Northern Light Health will continue to work for her safe return.”
The woman’s reentry denial provides insight into the decisions being made by federal officials working in President Donald Trump’s administration during the ongoing war in Iran. It follows a trend of other Iranians being denied entry or given significant restrictions, such as those deemed “integral” to Iran’s soccer team during the recent FIFA World Cup.
Dashti works in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, an employer-sponsored work visa for specialized fields. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, approved an extension of her visa in January that made it valid through early 2029, according to her attorneys and an approval notice filed alongside the complaint.
The 52-year-old crossed into Canada at the Fort Fairfield Port of Entry on April 8, turning around in a “matter of minutes, if not seconds,” to present her Canadian passport and visa to Customs and Border Protection, her attorneys said.
She did so, they said, at the advice of a Bureau of Motor Vehicles employee in the hopes it would update her immigration status in the BMW computer system to show that Dashti’s visa had been extended, which would allow her to renew her driver’s license.
Dashti lives in Presque Isle with her husband, who is also a Canadian citizen born in Iran, according to a transcript of her April interview with a border protection officer in Fort Fairfield. She has two children.
When she tried to return to the U.S. in April, border protection agents held her for 10 hours and interrogated her, the lawsuit said. They released her after midnight in Canada, where she had no home, no clothing and no possessions beyond a few items in her car.
Border protection told the woman she is inadmissible to the U.S. because she did not have valid documents, despite having a passport and visa, the lawsuit said. Agents did not allow her to call her lawyer when she asked.
While she was detained, agents’ questions focused on her mother’s employment with the Iranian government that ended in 1980, shortly after the Iranian Revolution that toppled the Western-backed monarchy and installed the Islamic Republic.
The woman told agents that she and her family “hold hatred for the Iranian regime” and pointed to her father’s activism and father-in-law’s execution by the regime. She fled to Canada in 2008 and has no plan to return to Iran, the lawsuit said.
Agents also asked the woman her opinions about the U.S. and Iran war, and she said she was sad that a war was necessary but that she hoped it would make Iran better, the lawsuit said. She also said she is “thankful to President Donald Trump for the death of Iran’s ayatollah, an event she described as a gift to all Iranian people,” according to the lawsuit.
BDN reporter Marie Weidmayer contributed to this report.
