{"id":8617,"date":"2025-10-03T09:13:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T16:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/?p=8617"},"modified":"2025-10-03T09:13:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T16:13:29","slug":"u-s-to-deport-immigrants-to-iran-tehran-says-raising-human-rights-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/?p=8617","title":{"rendered":"U.S. to deport immigrants to Iran, Tehran says, raising human rights concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The rare bilateral cooperation would come as tensions between the nations mount over Iran\u2019s nuclear program and a U.S. travel ban.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration has reached a deal to deport about 400 Iranian immigrants to Iran, a senior official in Tehran said, which would marka rare display of cooperation between the two countries that immediately raised concerns among human rights advocates for the immigrants\u2019 safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hossein Noushabadi, director general for parliamentary and consular affairs at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday that 120 immigrants are scheduled to fly to their native country, with a stopover in Qatar, this week, according to the Tasnim News Agency, Iran\u2019s semiofficial news outlet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese individuals are Iranians who left the country legally. However they entered the United States is another matter,\u201d Noushabadi said, the outlet reported. \u201cTheir return to the homeland faces no obstacle, as Iran will always support its citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. government did not confirm the report. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from The Washington Post about the flights. The New York Times\u00a0first reported\u00a0the plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A repatriation agreement would come at a delicate time for relations between Washington and Tehran, and would mark a major turnaround for Iran, a nation that has long refused to cooperate with deportations from the United States. Months of bilateral talks over Iran\u2019s nuclear program were abruptly upended in June when Israel launched extensive attacks against Iran, igniting a military conflict in which the United States bombed Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the U.N. General Assembly\u00a0last week, the United States supported the reimposition of economicsanctions against Iran, a move that sent the country\u2019s currency tumbling and is likely to exacerbate a simmering energy crisis this winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unclear if Iran would get anything in return for accepting the deportees. Alex Vatanka, an analyst at the Middle East Institute, said a deportation flight would allow both the Trump administration and Tehran to declare victory, despite tense relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Donald Trump could claim a win for his mass deportation campaign, and Iranian officials can claim to be protecting their citizens, Vatanka said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Islamic republic, despite the horrendous things it does to its own people, likes to go out and say, \u2018We protect Iranians anywhere in the world,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noushabadi told Tasnim that ICE has been planning to deport Iranians for months and that most of them had entered the United States illegally via Mexico, a number that spiked during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Border Patrol apprehended 1,500 Iranians who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally under the Biden administration, compared with 40 during Trump\u2019s first term, according to federal data.(Most of the roughly 520,000 people of Iranian descent in the United States are native born or naturalized U.S. citizens, according to the Census Bureau.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That leaves thousands of Iranian immigrants who could be removed under Trump\u2019s deportation policies, including efforts to restrict humanitarian protections such as asylum. At the United Nations last week, Trump expressed skepticism about asylum seekers and said it was time to \u201cend the failed experiment of open borders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immigrant rights advocates warned that the swift removals announced by the Iranian official could endanger Iranians who have resided in the United States for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. State Department\u2019s human rights report on Iran last year said Tehran\u2019s already severe crackdown on human rights had worsened. Hundreds of prisoners had been executed, including many who confessed under torture or faced unfair trials, the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ICE and the Iranian government did not identify who would be among those sent to Iran. After Israel launched the military strikes in June,\u00a0ICE arrested<\/a>\u00a0a number of Iranian nationals with criminal records. Some were in their 50s or 60s and had been convicted of crimes, and ordered deported decades ago. It is not clear whether any of them are scheduled to be on deportation flights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foreign affairs analysts and human rights advocates expressed concern that those on board could face persecution. Earlier this year, some Iranians deported by the Trump administration to alternate countries had converted to Christianity, an act Iranian law says is punishable by death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. government has long considered Iran a \u201crecalcitrant\u201d country that has refused to take back its citizens. Federal authorities deported fewer than 100 Iranians during Trump\u2019s first term. About 250 Iranians have been deported over the past dozen years, according to DHS data; more than half of them had no criminal record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June, Trump cited the lack of cooperation on deportations as one of the justifications for including Iran on a list of countries subject to a travel ban of its citizens to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe U.S. and Iranian governments don\u2019t usually talk to each other and don\u2019t usually cooperate on deportation flights, so this is new,\u201d said Ryan Costello, policy director at the nonprofit National Iranian American Council. \u201cIt\u2019s not something that is very typical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he hoped that cooperation would lead to talks on more urgent issues, such as Iran\u2019s nuclear program and Trump\u2019s travel ban, which have blocked students and family members of Americans from visiting the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIranians are kind of the collateral here, including some who might not want to go back to Iran,\u201d Costello said. \u201cOf all the areas for potential cooperation between the U.S. and the Iranian government, this is not one that\u2019s going to prevent a war or arguably improve a lot of people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rare bilateral cooperation would come as tensions between the nations mount over Iran\u2019s nuclear program and a U.S. travel ban. The Trump administration has reached a deal to deport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,29,33,32],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-8617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-international","category-iran-domestic","category-usa-intl","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8619,"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8617\/revisions\/8619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranreport.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}