Saturn's Shadow: An Adoptee's Deportation Battle

The stars do not concern themselves with borders, and yet borders concern themselves endlessly with human lives. In the early 1970s, a United States Air Force veteran walked into an Iranian orphanage and walked out with a two-year-old child. He believed he was bringing his daughter home. He believed that adoption meant belonging. He believed that love, sanctioned by law, would be enough to make her American.

He was wrong.

Decades later, that child—now a woman who describes herself as having "moved and breathed and got in trouble like many teenage Americans of the 80s"—faces deportation proceedings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She speaks no Farsi. She knows no one in Iran. Her only identity, she has insisted, is American. "I'm American," she told NPR. "I've never had any other identity besides that." But the United States government, operating under the cold logic of statutory gaps and enforcement priorities, has determined otherwise.

Saturn, the great taskmaster of the zodiac, has spent the past three years transiting through Pisces—the sign of the displaced, the forgotten, the spiritually unmoored. As the planet of boundaries, limitations, and karmic reckoning moves through the twelfth house of the collective unconscious, it has a way of revealing what nations prefer to keep hidden: the human cost of bureaucratic indifference, the lives caught in the machinery of laws written without them in mind.

The geometry of this moment is precise and unforgiving. Saturn now stands at 1.22 degrees Aries, having just crossed the Aries point—one of the most significant degrees in the entire zodiac, where personal identity meets public consequence. Neptune, the planet of dissolution and dreams, follows close behind at 0.89 degrees Aries. Their conjunction at the Aries point represents a rare cosmic alignment: the collision of boundaries with boundlessness, of law with compassion, of the rigid structures of nationhood with the fluid truth of human belonging.

The woman at the center of this story was adopted before the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. Before that legislation, adopted children from abroad were not automatically granted U.S. citizenship upon the completion of adoption proceedings. Her adoptive father—a World War II veteran who, according to the BBC, "abandoned" the family—apparently never naturalized her. Perhaps he assumed citizenship was automatic. Perhaps he simply failed to complete the paperwork. The reasons matter less than the consequence: a child raised American, educated American, shaped by American culture and American values, now finds herself legally stateless.

"I never imagined it would get to where it is today," she told the Associated Press. Her voice carries the bewilderment of someone who has discovered that the ground beneath her feet was never solid—only apparently so. "I always told myself that there is no way that this country could possibly send someone to their death in a country they left as an orphan. How could the United States do that?"

The question reverberates through the houses of an astrological chart like a chord struck in an empty room. Jupiter, the planet of law, expansion, and institutional reach, currently sits at 15.42 degrees Cancer—a sign associated with home, family, and maternal bonds. Cancer is the sign of belonging, of roots, of the deep emotional knowing that tells us where we come from and to whom we belong. Jupiter's presence here amplifies questions of legal belonging, of who gets to claim the title of family and who decides when that claim is valid.

But Jupiter in Cancer also exposes the gap between legal recognition and emotional truth. The law, in its rigid Saturnian logic, sees an Iranian national with a criminal record and an expired visa. The heart sees a daughter of America, abandoned first by her birth country, then by her adoptive father, and now by the only nation she has ever known. This is the wound that Saturn in Pisces has been excavating since March 2023: the suffering of those who fall through the cracks of systems designed without them in mind.

The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 closed the gap for future adoptions, but it did not apply retroactively. Thousands of adult adoptees remain in legal limbo, unaware that their citizenship was never formalized until they apply for passports, seek government benefits, or—most devastatingly—encounter the criminal justice system. The Adoptee Citizenship Act, a bipartisan measure designed to close this gap, has been introduced repeatedly in Congress but has never passed. Political will, it seems, does not extend to those who cannot vote.

Mars, the planet of conflict and tactical action, currently occupies 25.41 degrees Aquarius—a sign associated with collective movements, social justice, and the friction between individual rights and institutional power. Mars in Aquarius fights not for personal glory but for principle, and its presence here suggests that this case has become something larger than one woman's struggle. It has become a referendum on what America owes to those it welcomed as children and now seeks to discard as adults.

The parallels with other cases are impossible to ignore. NBC News reports that approximately 200,000 South Koreans were adopted overseas during the past six decades, the majority to American couples. Many of these adoptees face similar legal vulnerabilities. Adam Crapser, a Korean adoptee deported to South Korea in 2016, became the first such adoptee to sue the Korean government and adoption agency in 2019. His words carry the weight of lived experience: "I did not get the choice of whether or not I could grow up in my country. I did not get the choice to know my language, Korean, or the choice to know my culture. And I did not get the choice to grow up with my Korean family."

The astrology of Crapser's deportation in October 2016 reveals Saturn at 11.84 degrees Sagittarius—the sign of foreign travel, legal systems, and philosophical truth. Saturn's transit through Sagittarius from late 2014 through late 2017 coincided with a wave of immigration enforcement actions, travel restrictions, and legal challenges to established norms of belonging. The planet of boundaries was moving through the sign of borders, both physical and ideological.

But the current moment carries different energies. Saturn has completed its journey through Capricorn (its home sign, where it governs with authority) and Aquarius (where it restructures social systems), and has now crossed into Aries. The shift from Pisces to Aries represents the movement from the twelfth house of hidden suffering to the first house of self-assertion. What was concealed is now being forced into visibility. What was endured in silence is now demanding recognition.

The conjunction of Saturn and Neptune at the Aries point is particularly significant for understanding this moment. Saturn represents the structures that define and confine us: laws, borders, institutions, authorities. Neptune represents the dissolution of those same structures: compassion that transcends legal categories, the mystical understanding that all borders are ultimately arbitrary, the dream of universal belonging. When these two planets meet at the very beginning of Aries—the sign of new beginnings, of the self asserting itself against the world—we witness a collision between the impulse to define and the impulse to transcend definition.

The woman facing deportation embodies this collision. She is legally defined as Iranian, but she is experientially American. She is bound by the Saturnian structures of immigration law, yet her very existence challenges the Neptunian premise that identity can be reduced to paperwork. Her case forces us to confront the question that Saturn in Pisces has been asking for three years: What do we owe to those who fall between the categories we have created?

Mercury, the planet of communication and narrative framing, currently occupies 22.38 degrees Pisces—still within the sign of the displaced, still processing the stories of those who have been marginalized. Mercury in Pisces speaks in the language of empathy, of imagination, of the stories that statistics cannot capture. This placement suggests that the narrative emerging from this case—the human story behind the legal proceedings—has the power to shift public consciousness.

The geopolitical context adds layers of complexity. The United States and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980, following the hostage crisis that defined a generation of American foreign policy. Deportation to Iran is not merely a matter of relocating a person to a country of origin; it is sending someone into a nation that the United States does not officially recognize, with no consular support, no infrastructure for reintegration, no safety net for a person who speaks no Farsi and has no memory of Iranian life.

In January 2026, CNN reported the first known deportation flight to Iran since sweeping anti-government protests in which thousands have been killed. The timing aligns with Saturn's final push through Pisces—the last degrees of any sign carry a sense of urgency, of unfinished business demanding resolution. The Iranian adoptee facing deportation is not being sent to a country; she is being sent into a void, a geopolitical blind spot where American responsibility ends and Iranian reality begins.

NPR characterized the case in stark terms: "The sheer possibility of the daughter of an American WWII hero being sent overseas, through no fault of her own, epitomizes a broken system." The phrase "through no fault of her own" carries particular weight in astrological terms. Saturn governs karma—the law of cause and effect—but the karma in this case is not hers. She did not choose to be born in Iran. She did not choose to be orphaned. She did not choose to be adopted by an American family or to be abandoned by her adoptive father. She did not choose to grow up American without the paperwork to prove it.

The karma here belongs to systems and structures, to laws written without foresight and enforcement pursued without wisdom. Saturn's transit through Pisces has been exposing these karmic debts, bringing to light the consequences of decisions made decades ago. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 was a Saturnian attempt to create structure where there was none, but its failure to apply retroactively left a wound that continues to bleed.

The Moon, representing public mood and emotional response, currently occupies 9.46 degrees Gemini—the sign of information, communication, and the gathering of perspectives. The Moon in Gemini processes emotionally through intellectual engagement, through the collection and comparison of stories. This placement suggests that the public response to this case will be shaped by the spread of information, by the accumulation of similar stories that reveal a pattern rather than an anomaly.

Pluto, the planet of transformation and deep structural change, sits at 4.42 degrees Aquarius—the sign of collective movements and social reorganization. Pluto in Aquarius suggests that the transformation we are witnessing is not merely personal but systemic. The cases of international adoptees facing deportation are symptoms of a larger dis-ease: immigration systems designed for a world that no longer exists, legal categories that fail to capture the complexity of modern families, enforcement priorities that prioritize technical compliance over human connection.

The woman at the center of this storm has become a symbol, though she never asked to be one. She is a living illustration of what happens when Saturn's boundaries fail to account for Neptune's compassion. She is proof that laws, however well-intentioned, can produce injustice when applied without flexibility. She is evidence that belonging cannot be reduced to documentation, that identity cannot be determined solely by paperwork.

"He abandoned us, is the nicest way I can put it," she said of her adoptive father, according to the BBC. The word "abandoned" echoes through her life like a recurring theme: abandoned by birth parents in an Iranian orphanage, abandoned by the American father who promised her a home, and now abandoned by the country that raised her. Saturn in Pisces has a way of revealing these patterns, of showing us where our systems of care have failed.

The current sky offers both challenge and possibility. Saturn at the Aries point demands that we take action, that we assert new beginnings. Neptune close behind reminds us that the action we take must be informed by compassion, by the recognition that borders are human constructions and that human beings deserve better than to be caught in the machinery of their own making.

Venus at 17.94 degrees Pisces brings love and beauty to the sign of spiritual transcendence. This placement suggests that the path forward lies not in harder enforcement but in deeper understanding—not in building higher walls but in recognizing the humanity of those who have already crossed them. Venus in Pisces loves without condition, sees worth without category, and reminds us that the highest form of justice is mercy.

The case of the Iranian adoptee facing deportation is not merely a legal matter. It is a moral referendum, a karmic reckoning, a test of whether America's promises extend to those who arrived as children and grew up as its own. Saturn has done its work of exposure; Neptune has done its work of dissolution. The question now is what remains when the structures we have built are revealed to be insufficient.

What remains, perhaps, is the simple truth that a child was brought to America and told she was home. She believed it. She lived it. She became American in every way that matters except the one that, under current law, matters most. Saturn's shadow falls across her story, but Neptune's light suggests that belonging is more than paperwork—that home is more than a legal designation.

The stars do not concern themselves with borders. But perhaps, in their indifferent dance across the sky, they offer us a mirror in which we can see ourselves more clearly. What we do with that reflection is not written in the heavens. It is written in our choices, our laws, our capacity to recognize that the systems we create must serve the people they were meant to protect—not the other way around.

The woman waits. Saturn moves. And the question of what America owes to its children—its real children, not its legal categories—hangs in the balance like a held breath.