Jason Rezaian criticizes the increasing harassment of Iranian-Americans and Iranian travelers to the U.S. at the border:

Despite many bureaucratic obstacles, Americans of Iranian background have achieved a level of educational and material success that many other immigrant populations envy. Yet even though this large and prosperous community continues to grow in size, wealth and political influence, they still face discrimination. This sort of targeted harassment of Iranian Americans must end.

The travel ban has already caused tremendous hardship for thousands of families by separating American citizens from their spouses and fiancees and other relatives because they happen to have been born in Iran. More recently, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been harassing Iranian-Americans and other Iranian-born travelers at the border, including a large number of Iranian students who traveled here with legitimate student visas. Despite CBP’s denials that there was ever a directive issued to target travelers born in Iran, the text of that directive came to light in the last week. The government has been targeting Iranian-born travelers, including U.S. citizens, and when they were called out for this outrageous harassment the CBP lied about it.

All of these things are driven by the administration’s hostility towards the Iranian people and the unfounded assumption that Iranian travelers to this country pose some sort of threat, and this hostility has now predictably extended to U.S. citizens of Iranian heritage as well. As the administration’s destructive Iran policy has driven the two countries to the brink of war more than once in the last year, the government has also started targeting innocent people solely because of where they were born. The administration’s Iran policy has not only inflicted enormous hardship on the Iranian people inside Iran, but it is also fueling discriminatory practices against the Iranian-American community here at home. None of this would be happening were it not for the administration’s Iran obsession and its antipathy towards the Iranian people.

The harassment and mistreatment of both the students and other travelers have been documented extensively over the last month, and as the recent report from Vice shows this mistreatment has continued. Late last month, an active duty American soldier was detained and his phone confiscated because he happened to have been born in Iran:

Earlier this month Customs and Border Protection seized the iPhone of an active duty American soldier as they were transferring through a U.S. airport as part of their directed orders. After questioning, the CBP sent the iPhone to a lab for forensic analysis, according to the service member and a CBP document obtained by Motherboard. The soldier, an American citizen born in Iran, told Motherboard they believe the questioning and seizure was due to their Iranian heritage.

These detentions are harassment, and they are also the worst and most abusive kind of security theater. Barring a Canadian truck driver from doing his job because his last name happens to be Soleimani is just one example of how this obnoxious policy is being implemented. While U.S. officials fixate on non-existent threats from Iranian-born travelers, they are wasting their time and resources, and they are hassling innocent people who are simply going about their business. None of this makes the U.S. any safer, but it does insult and disrespect our Iranian-American neighbors and friends.