AP Exclusive: Trump administration held talks with Iran on deporting Iranians during the war

“And what you’re telling me is that the United States of America is going to send individuals back to that region, facing what you and I and everyone who would ever look at this would know would be, at a minimum, a serious threat of certain death.”

“Yes, your honor,” Justice Department attorney Dimitar Georgiev-Remmel said. “The government is executing lawful orders of removal.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The development emerged from an ongoing lawsuit that alleges the Trump administration’s immigration agencies have been sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with the Iranian government, violating national immigration regulations and endangering countless Iranians, court filings argue.

The new court documents show the coordination continued during the war.

The lawsuit depicts a coordinated campaign between the U.S. and Iranian governments to identify Iranians in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and pressure them to return to Iran — a marked departure from decades of diplomatic hostility between the two governments and an ongoing war. DHS has denied that it is sharing asylum application records with the Iranian government.

Hundreds of emails exchanged between U.S. immigration officials exposed how the two countries worked together to arrange for more than 100 Iranians to be flown back to Iran on three immigration flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026.

Deportations of Iranians back to their home country are historically rare, owing to the lack of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran and the possible persecution they could face if they were sent to Iran.

But under the Trump administration, ICE has aggressively pushed to deport people even from countries that have typically been reluctant to take people back or with whom the U.S. has had icy or no diplomatic relations.

Sometimes that has meant sending people back to their home country but it has also meant deporting people to other countries that they have no connection with.

The Trump administration has deported people, including Iranians, to countries other than their own in an attempt to circumvent diplomatic hurdles with governments that won’t take their people back. During Trump’s second term, countries including El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama have accepted noncitizens from the U.S.

In June, an Iranian woman was among the two dozen migrants the U.S. deported to the Central African Republic.

Activists abroad have expressed concern about deportees returning to Iran, whose theocracy has been cracking down on intellectuals and where the government vociferously cracks down on any dissent.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the Iran war at https://apnews.com/hub/iran.

Michael Kunzelman And Rebecca Santana, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

AP Exclusive: Trump administration held talks with Iran on deporting Iranians during the war

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