Iran International
The United States deported two Iranian asylum seekers to Tehran against their will — shackling them on the flight and delivering them into the hands of the very authorities they fled, their attorney told Iran International.
The deportations were part of a larger operation that returned 120 Iranians from US custody to Tehran.
Ali Herischi, an immigration attorney at Maryland-based Herischi & Associates, told Iran International that one of his clients is a political dissident and the other a Christian convert.
Both had crossed into the United States from the border with Mexico to claim asylum. The dissident’s wife, who recently gave birth in the United States, is now caring for their three-month-old child alone.
“She is devastated,” Herischi said. “There’s significant uncertainty about the future and when they can reunite.”
Herischi said neither client consented to deportation, warning that their files, phones and documents were handed to Iranian authorities.
“Unfortunately, their belongings — including their files, evidence and cell phones — have been handed to Iranian authorities. That’s very dangerous.”
The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond an Iran International request for comment.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that a US-chartered flight carrying over 100 Iranians left a military airport in Louisiana, stopped in Puerto Rico to pick up additional deportees, and then continued to Doha, Qatar, before the passengers were transferred onto another chartered flight to Tehran.
Herischi estimates as many as 220 people were deported, though some were left in Qatar. The deportees, he added, were denied the chance to fully argue their asylum cases per rules during the Trump presidency that restricts claims by those who entered through the southern border.
‘Pick your poison'
Earlier this year, the United States deported another group of Iranians — many of them Christian converts — to Costa Rica and Panama, despite the risk of persecution they could face back home.
According to Herischi, deportees were sometimes presented with a choice: “ICE would say, 'either you consent to deportation to Iran, or we send you to Somalia or Sudan.' It was, 'pick your poison.' In the case of my clients, they didn’t even get that. They just said, you’re done, let’s go.”
The deportation flight, The New York Times reported, followed “months of negotiations” between Washington and Tehran, citing two senior Iranian officials involved in the talks and a US official with knowledge of the plans.
According to the Times, the State Department first approached Iran’s interests section in Washington about coordinating deportations three months ago. Iran had to verify identities and issue travel documents for some detainees.
Herischi said, “We need to know what has been exchanged in price of deportation of those individuals... Whether Iran had any influence on the list of deportees or set the priority of who is going to accept.”
The move, Herischi added, risks normalizing Iran’s human rights record and undermining America’s stated commitment to protecting persecuted minorities. “It’s like, oh, it’s just a normal country, why do we care? That’s not right.”
