ICE Worked With Iran To Deport Iranians Back To A Country Trump Repeatedly Claimed Was Harming Iranians
The Trump administration has been working steadily to remove protected status for asylum seekers that even Trump admits are deadly shitholes." Trump makes claims about countries that seem to indicate they're too dangerous to live in, but then insists there's no reason we shouldn't be allowed to deport migrants to places where they're likely to be tortured, killed, or just maybe starve to death.
When justifying his war with Iran (which he still won't officially state is a war" because that means he'd have to start seeking permission from Congress to engage in future military action), Trump often pointed out how poorly the radical Islamist government treated its own citizens. In fact, he borrowed language from multiple presidential executive orders (including ones not composed by his second presidential administration) to justify doing whatever the fuck he wanted in terms of military attacks on Iran.
For example, Executive Order 13553 of September 28, 2010 (Blocking Property of Certain Persons With Respect to Serious Human Rights Abuses by the Government of Iran and Taking Certain Other Actions), took additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12957, including authorizing the blocking of property to address serious human rights abuses against persons in Iran.
That was included in Trump's February 2026 Executive Order, which introduced tariffs to long-standing sanctions against the country of Iran.
These statements were delivered a few weeks earlier:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Iranians to keep protesting and remember the names of those abusing them, saying help is on the way, as Iran's clerical establishment pressed its crackdown against thebiggest demonstrationsin years.
[...]
[Trump] said he had canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until thesenseless killing"of protesters stopped and in a later speech told Iranians to save the name of the killers and the abusers ... because they'll pay a very big price."
So, Trump knew things were dangerous for Iranian citizens who opposed the same government he was now threatening to wage war on. And for years, the United States government (no matter who's been running it) has opened its doors to dissidents and others facing persecution and death by the hardline Islamic government.
But Trump no longer cares about Iranian refugees, even as he continues to wage war on their former homeland. Now that's he's fully engaged in a conflict he can't seem to win, Trump's government is working directly with the enemy to allow the Iranian government to pick and choose which asylum seekers will be sent back to face almost certain punishment.
Hundreds of emailsspanning from May to November of last year show ICE officials, operating under the orders of then-Acting Director Todd Lyons, scrambling to put together plans for three controversial charter flights to Iran in the clearest picture yet of the Trump administration's behind-the-scenes planning for the trips.
The flights delivered more than 100 people to an uncertain fate in Tehran just months or weeks before the U.S. and Israel launched their currentdevastating war, which has to date killed thousands of Iranians.
To say the fate of those being ejected from the US was uncertain" is The Intercept being about as diplomatic as it can be, given the circumstances.
The fate was clear for most, who had already seen the Trump administration decide former Iranian citizens were no longer deserving of seeking to better their lives, much less simply given the chance to stay alive, by fleeing Iran.
Each flight arrived in Tehran carrying at least a dozen deportees, including political activists and ethnic and religious minorities who had good reason to fear persecution upon arrival. Many of the people flown to Tehran were transported against their will, including one man wholater told the New York Timesthat he attempted suicide before the flight and ICE agents physically forced him onto the plane.
That would be cruelly gruesome enough if it was just the Trump administration doing its casually racist white nationalist thing. But, as the emails shared with The Intercept make clear, ICE was allowing the Iranian government to guide this specific deportation program, presumably in hopes of forcing refugees and dissidents to return to Iran where they could be punished.
The emails show steady escalation since Trump's return to office, even as he was composing Executive Orders condemning Iran for its constant human rights violations and telling Iranian protesters to keep the faith because the US was riding to rescue. Meanwhile, on ICE back channels, the administration was letting the Iranian government generate packing slips (so to speak) for ICE deportation flights to Iran.
This disturbing program that deliberately allowed Iran to reclaim" people the government wanted to punish was brokered by Qatar. And the Qatari government's only concern appeared to be that deportation flights to Iran weren't quite as packed as it had been told they would be.
For reasons that are not made clear in the emails, the Iranian deportees numbered fewer than half the 120 Iranian nationals that Qatar and Iran were expecting. The Qataris were not happy.
We would like clarification on why the number of passengers has been reduced from 120 to 54, as this directly affects our internal operations," wrote a representative of the Qatari Ministry of the Interior in an email to ICE officials. Last-minute changes are not welcome, especially since we are an intermediary with the Iranians."
The only reason we aren't deporting more Iranians now is because the Trump administration blew that all up by deciding to start bombing Iran. That doesn't mean ICE and the DHS are still scooping up Iranians and getting them prepped for a return to a country that only wants them back so it can kill or torture them. It's pretty difficult to talk anyone into doing anything when you've violently severed anything that might resemble diplomatic communication lines.
But what's most disturbing is that the Trump administration was doing this at all. For nearly 50 years, Iran has been cut off from the US and considered to be dangerously untrustworthy. But when this administration decided it wanted to get as many brown people as possible out of the US, it approached a government no one else in the world trusts and asked known (and acknowledged!) human rights abusers which humans they'd like back first. That's fucked up. And no amount of war is going to change that nasty fact.