Gay man says ICE is keeping his husband jailed even though they’ve agreed to leave the U.S.

A married couple from Azerbaijan says the Trump administration is keeping one husband locked in an immigration detention center in Georgia even though both men, one of whom is a legal permanent resident, have agreed to leave the United States immediately. Their case raises questions about why the government is continuing to hold him at all.

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Samir Gadirov, 30, says he and his husband have already decided to leave the United States and return to Azerbaijan. “Yes, that’s still the plan, that we are going back to Azerbaijan,” he said. What he cannot understand, he said, is why his husband, Tural Atakishiyev, 40, remains locked up while they wait for the government to allow them to go.

Atakishiyev has been held at Stewart Detention Center since January 14. Gadirov said they are waiting for a judge’s decision so his husband can depart voluntarily. “We are waiting for the judge's decision on his voluntary departure back to Azerbaijan,” he told The Advocate in an interview. “Even the voluntary departure process is taking too long.”

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Gadirov said his husband has now been in custody for more than a month, and it's negatively affected his body and mind.

“He already lost 25 pounds,” he said. “He can’t eat there. His mental health is not good. So he’s struggling.”

Tural Atakishiyev and Samir Gadirov.Samir Gadirov

The strain, he said, is not only on his husband.

“He’s inside, but I’m outside, but I’m living the same situation,” Gadirov said. “I’m experiencing the same situation, same feelings.”

Atakishiyev was taken into custody in North Carolina, where the couple lives, during what Gadirov described as a routine immigration check-in and transferred to Stewart, one of the largest immigration jails in the country. The couple, who married in Charlotte last November, faced a stark choice: fight their case for months while Atakishiyev remained detained, or give up and return to Azerbaijan, a country where their marriage is not recognized, and LGBTQ+ people face widespread discrimination and police harassment.

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Gadirov said they chose to leave because 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 [for the Trump administration to eventually deport him anyway], we don’t want it. That’s why we are trying to make this jail period as short as possible.”

He said he and their attorney are now waiting for a court and for ICE to work out the logistics.

“After the judge orders [his release], 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,” he said. “I’m trying to put pressure on ICE on every step, you know, but it seems like it’s very slow.”

Tural Atakishiyev (left) and Samir Gadirov are returning to Azerbeijan as soon as ICE releases one of the husbands from custody.Samir Gadirov

Inside Stewart, Gadirov said, conditions have taken a serious toll on his husband.

“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 said Atakishiyev has repeatedly been called in to see medical staff, only to be told they will “figure out” his situation. “They don’t do anything,” Gadirov said. He added that even after a medical staffer told his husband he would be given his medication, “it’s been a week and nothing.”

Gadirov said he drives six hours to Georgia every week for his single visit. He also described the food inside the facility as difficult to eat. “It smells bad, and he cannot eat food,” he said, adding that his husband relies on commissary purchases, which are limited and cost money. “They are charging for video calls, for just calls, for the messages, for the commissary and everything,” he said. “So we spend a lot of money while he’s been there.” Gadirov said his husband sometimes eats only once a day.

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CoreCivic, the private company that operates Stewart Detention Center, said in a statement to The Advocate from Ryan Gustin, its senior director of public affairs, that it could not discuss an individual detainee’s health “due to federal medical privacy laws,” but defended conditions at the facility more broadly.

“We’re committed to providing safe, humane and respectful care for everyone entrusted to us,” Gustin said, adding that CoreCivic “take[s] seriously our obligation to adhere to all applicable federal detention standards.” He said an ICE Detention Standards Compliance Officer is on-site at Stewart “to ensure we follow their strict standards and policies.”

Gustin said CoreCivic’s “onsite health services team at SDC takes seriously their responsibility to provide high-quality healthcare, available 24/7,” that detainees have daily access to sign up for care, and that the clinic is staffed by “licensed health care professionals, including physicians, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health counselors and dentists.” He said prescribed medication “is either managed by our health services team or by the detainees themselves, depending on the type of medication,” adding that “our pharmacy nurses review the medication orders and promptly inform the ordering physician when renewals are required.” Gustin also said ICE’s Health Services Corps audited Stewart’s health services in June 2025 and “found no deficiencies.” On food, Gustin said CoreCivic provides “three nutritious meals a day for those in our care at SDC” and takes “great care to offer meals that support specialized diets, including religious diets and more than a dozen therapeutic diets, as well as cultural preferences,” with menus reviewed by a registered dietitian “to ensure appropriate nutrition is provided.”

Gadirov's husband came to the United States in 2024 after meeting Gadirov, who had been on vacation in Azerbaijan beforehand. Gadirov said Atakishiyev entered the country with temporary permission, applied for asylum and work authorization, and then married him. That marriage, Gadirov said, also opened a path for Atakishiyev to seek residency. Before his detention in January, Gadirov said, his husband had been complying with the government’s reporting requirements and believed he was following the rules.

Gadirov himself came to the United States after winning a green card through the diversity visa lottery in 2018, a lottery-style system that makes up to 55,000 immigrant visas available each year to people born in countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. Winners have the opportunity to apply for permanent resident status after a multistep vetting process. The Trump administration announced in December that it was pausing the program.

He has lived in the country since 2019, and said he never would have imagined that the U.S. would feel so hostile to immigrants. He said that now that he is eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship, he will, but the situation has shaken his sense of safety even as a lawful permanent resident.

“They don’t care about rules, they don’t care about law, and this situation freaks me out,” he said. “Now we are worried about our lives in the United States.”

He said that, in theory, the U.S. should be safer for a gay couple than Azerbaijan, but that is no longer how it feels.

Gadirov said returning to the former Soviet bloc country will not be easy. “Definitely not,” he said when asked whether their marriage would be recognized there. He said they are struggling emotionally and financially, especially since their small home renovation business stopped after his husband was detained.

“We put our business on hold,” he said. “That’s why even now we are struggling, and I cannot apply for a job, because I don’t know when Tural will be deported, and I have to leave as soon as possible after him.”

With help from a church and an immigrant advocacy group, he said, they have started fundraising to survive and to plan what comes next. With the help of a GoFundMe campaign, he said that when the couple leaves the U.S., they are considering moving to the countryside because “it’s going to be very tough to find any jobs for people like us” in cities. “We can live in the countryside, and kind of start our lives from scratch, from zero,” he said, possibly building a small house and trying to survive through farming or construction work. “And live our lives in peace.”

Gadirov said being together matters more than where they live. “He’s my second half,” he said. “If we can be happy as a couple together in Azerbaijan, in the countryside, we are fine with that.”

The Department of Homeland Security has previously said Atakishiyev missed check-ins, a claim Gadirov strongly 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.”

He said DHS has also claimed his husband received medical care, which he disputes.

“They told us that they have done something for his medication, for his medical situation, but that’s also a total lie,” he said, adding that interpreters have been available and that staff are aware of his husband’s condition. “They know when he was sick. He had a fever. And he was badly coughing, and he’s still coughing there,” Gadirov said. “So there’s no excuse.”

ICE did not respond to The Advocate’s request for comment.

Gadirov said the day his husband was taken into custody still feels unreal. He described waiting at the check-in office and noticing that the staffer avoided eye contact when he asked why Atakishiyev had not returned.

Looking back, he said, he never imagined this could happen.

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

He said he still plans to apply for U.S. citizenship this year, even if they are forced to leave, in hopes of one day returning under different circumstances.

“I like the United States,” he said. “I’m not saying, okay, I hate the States, and I’m kind of going back. No, I hate the current government and the current situation. Everything was good here, but now it’s horrible. It’s frustrating.”

For now, he said, the only thing he wants is for his husband to be released so they can leave together.

“We are not even fighting to stay here,” he said. “We already said, fine, we’ll leave — just let us go.”

The Advocate contacted outgoing Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin with detailed questions about Atakishiyev’s medical care, access to medication and food, and the reasons he remains detained despite the couple’s stated willingness to depart the United States immediately. She did not respond.