A gay couple from Azerbaijan is suffering the current administration’s crusade against immigrants from two sides of a heavy glass partition at an ICE detention facility in Georgia.

“He’s inside, but I’m outside, but I’m living the same situation,” Samir Gadirov, 30, told the Advocate of his husband held in detention. “I’m experiencing the same situation, same feelings.”

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Gadirov’s husband, Tural Atakishiyev, 40, was taken into custody in January during a routine immigration check-in in North Carolina, where the couple lives and has a small home renovation business.

The couple met when Gadirov, a permanent U.S. resident, was on vacation in Azerbaijan in 2024. Atakishiyev entered the U.S. with temporary permission, applied for asylum and work authorization, and the couple married last November.

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Their marriage opened a path for residency for Atakishiyev, as well, Gadirov said.

But five weeks ago, Atakishiyev was taken into custody. The day still feels unreal, Gadirov said.

He described waiting at the check-in office where Atakishiyev was reporting, and noticing that the staffer was avoiding eye contact. His husband never returned.

The Department of Homeland Security claims Atakishiyev had missed check-ins, which Gadirov disputes. “We never, never missed any of those, and we only followed the rules,” he said. “We applied for asylum, we got married, we applied for I-130, and every legal step that needs to be done, we have done that. But ICE now is lying.”

Now Gadirov drives the six hours from North Carolina to the Stewart Detention Center in southwestern Georgia for his single allotted visit per week with Atakishiyev.

“I can see him through glass windows only,” he said. “The food is awful, and the medication is awful. It’s been like a month, but they have not given him his prescription medication, the pills, because he has panic attacks.”

“He already lost 25 pounds,” Gadirov said.

Now the couple faces a choice: fight their case for months while Atakishiyev remains detained, or “self-deport” to Azerbaijan, where LGBTQ+ people suffer discrimination and worse, and their marriage won’t be recognized.

They’ve chosen the latter.

“I knew the U.S. as a free country,” Gadirov said. “The United States was equal to freedom, but now it’s not.”

Gadirov said his husband’s health mattered more than staying in the United States.

“His mental health is very important to me,” he said. “So, five, six months inside, we don’t want it.”

Now Gadirov is trying to convince DHS, ICE, and an immigration judge to simply let his husband go so the couple can leave the country.

“We’ll have to deal again with ICE to kind of figure out his plane ticket and how we can make this situation as quick as possible,” Gadirov said. “But it seems like it’s very slow.”

In the meantime, Gadirov is thankful for help from a local church and an immigrant advocacy group who’ve started a GoFundMe campaign to help with what comes next for the couple.

Gadirov envisions a life in the country.

“We can live in the countryside, and kind of start our lives from scratch, from zero,” he said.

“He’s my second half,” Gadirov said of Atakishiyev. “If we can be happy as a couple together in Azerbaijan, in the countryside, we are fine with that.”

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