Federal immigration agents arrested an Iranian national with “admitted connection” to Hezbollah in St. Paul over the weekend as part of a sweep of detainments across the country.
Mehran Makari Saheli, 56, was arrested by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement along with 11 others in nine U.S. cities, the majority being Iranian nationals. He is in ICE custody at Sherburne County Jail pending his removal from the country.
ICE officials said Saheli illegally resided in the United States after an immigration judge ordered his deportation from the country June 28, 2022. That year, he was sentenced to a little over a year in prison after he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm in Minnesota.
According to court filings, the firearm charge stemmed from his arrest in 2020 after police in Lonsdale, Minn., stopped Saheli for traffic violations. Officers found a 9-millimeter pistol inside a backpack within the car Saheli was driving.
Saheli was prohibited from carrying a firearm because of his prior felony conviction in 2009 to one charge of possessing fraudulent immigration documentation. In that case, Saheli pleaded guilty to carrying a fraudulent Turkish passport bearing his name.
ICE officials said Saheli is a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, part of Iran’s military deemed a terrorist organization in 2019, and has “admitted connections” to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based organization also labeled a terrorist group in 1997, per a news release.
Officials have not linked the arrests to specific terrorism plots, CBS News reported, as the arrests came in the wake of heightened security awareness following U.S. strikes in Iran over the weekend.
