APP: Brian Swank spends each day wanting to see his fiancée Mehraneh and start the life they have planned together: marriage, house, dog and children.

It's their American dream, but they face a major obstacle, one with no end in sight.

The two have been living divided, separated by a federal travel ban that keeps Mehraneh in her home country, Iran, while Swank seeks help from immigration lawyers from his home in the Forked River section of Lacey.

"All day I'm thinking about her," said 26-year-old Swank, a landscape architect who works on new construction in Long Beach Island.
Brian Swank and his fiancee Meraneh pose in front of the Statue of Liberty.

Nearly four years ago, they met in a landscape architecture class at the the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, where Mehraneh was completing her doctorate in the field. She helped teach him about working in the field, while he helped her practice English. Swank was smitten and their relationship progressed quickly.

"This girl is unlike anybody I've ever met before," he recalled thinking. "She's amazing."

Mehraneh — whose last name has been withheld for her protection due to strife between the United States and Iran — stayed for a year, but when her student visa was about to expire, Swank made his proposal.

"I knew 'This is the girl for me. I can't lose her,'" he said. "I told her, 'I love you more than anything. I don't want to lose this. I've never had anybody in my life like this before.'"

Swank knew Mehraneh had to return to Iran for at least two years. The federal  Immigration and Nationality Act requires many visiting scholars to return to their home country for at least two years before applying for another visa to enter the United States.

He couldn't follow. As a self-described "Catholic, American white guy," Swank risked imprisonment if he entered the country. Iran also prohibits Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men.

"We knew it was going to be hard and we would be separated for a while," Swank said. "I was a poor college kid at the time. I couldn't afford a ring, but I said, 'I promise you... I'd never give up. I want to be together.'"

They were preparing an application for a "fiancée visa" when in 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that blocked most travel to the United States from five majority Muslim countries: Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia as well as North Korea and Venezuela. When challenged before the Supreme Court in June later that same year, the court ruled 5-4 to uphold the travel ban.

"I could never imagine my life being like this," Mehraneh wrote in an email to the Press from her home in Iran. "We have been planning our life together for years now and I can’t believe all our dreams are being ruined by a presidential proclamation." >>>