It was a trip Heidi must have taken over a hundred times.

At least once a month for the last 10 years, Heidi, an Iranian with a U.S. green card, has driven through Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Washington, to visit her mother in Vancouver, Canada, before returning home.

When Heidi and her girlfriend both Nexus cardholders who are qualified for expedited processing crossed back into the U.S. that Saturday afternoon, they received an ominous orange slip that told them to exit their vehicle for additional screening. U.S. officials took their passports and Heidis green card away and questioned them for hours.

Heidi, who is using a pseudonym in this story for fear of retaliation, was questioned about her place of birth, her current occupation, whether she had ever touched a gun, where she studied, and her political views on the latest escalation between the United States and Iran, she told HuffPost.

Mere days before Heidi and her girlfriends detention, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a senior Iranian commander and one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East, had been killed in an airstrike on the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq at the direction of President Donald Trump , heightening tensions between the two nations and the wider Middle Eastern region.

Before the news broke, Heidi had no idea who Soleimani even was.

Heidi and her girlfriend were two of more than 100 people of Iranian descent who say they were held without explanation at the Blaine border crossing in some cases for at least 11 hours.

Customs and Border Protection has since denied those accusations , telling HuffPost in an emailed statement that the social media posts that CBP is detaining Iranian-Americans and refusing their entry into the U.S. because of their country of origin are false.

A CBP official told HuffPost that the federal agency was currently operating with an enhanced posture at its ports of entry due to the current threat environment. The official also attributed the long wait times at Blaine which CBP said averaged two hours and extended up to four hours to increased volume and reduced staff.

Lawmakers and other political leaders have since condemned the reported detentions. Former presidential candidate and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) tweeted that CBPs denial of these reports are simply not credible. Rep. Pramila Jaypal (D-Wash.) also noted that the detentions were a result of some sort of directive, which CBP has denied. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is running for president, demanded that CBP clarify its policies and explain why those individuals were stopped at the border.

The reports from the U.S.-Canada border have raised red flags for civil rights advocates, who say the detentions set a dangerous precedent for the targeting of Iranians in the U.S., as well as other Middle Eastern, South Asian and Muslim minority communities.

The pattern is familiar. Each time the U.S. has entered into a military conflict in the region whether in Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan those marginalized communities in the U.S. suffer the consequences, including a crackdown on their civil rights.

If we cant count even on our local leadership to protect us as Americans, we are barrelling down a very dangerous path and our civil liberties really are threatened right now. This is not a joke, said Mana Mostatabi, the communications director at the National Iranian American Council, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that advocates for Iranian Americans.

The Department of Homeland Securitys Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties has since opened an investigation into the treatment of Iranian Americans at U.S. ports of entry in response to a complaint from NIAC. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is also exploring legal action to find whether the federal government sent any national directive to local authorities in Blaine.

We want to send a strong message to the Trump administration that behavior like this wont be tolerated, said Masih Fouladi, the executive director of CAIR Washington.