Overview

• On June 21 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers went to Mehrzad Asadi Eidivand’s residence to enforce a 2013 removal order and were met by his wife’s threats to shoot them.
• Agents from Homeland Security Investigations and ICE executed a search warrant on June 22 and discovered a loaded handgun on the kitchen counter and a second on a nightstand.
• A federal grand jury in Phoenix returned an indictment on June 24 charging Eidivand, 40, with being an alien in possession of a firearm and his wife, Linet Vartanniavartanians, 37, with threatening to assault a federal officer.
• Eidivand had remained in the United States for more than a decade after the Board of Immigration Appeals denied his appeals against the removal order.
• Both defendants remain in custody under the Department of Justice’s Operation Take Back America initiative and are scheduled for a July 9 hearing in Phoenix.