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Officials in Tehran say the United States has deported a second group of Iranian nationals as the Trump administration continues its immigration enforcement efforts.
According to reports, a charter flight carrying more than 50 Iranians took off from Mesa, Arizona on Sunday, passing through Cairo and Kuwait before arriving in Iran.
Tehran’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the Iranian nationals had returned to Iran. For security reasons, U.S. immigration officials cannot “confirm or deny flights.”
The first expulsion plane took off from the United States in late September, a rare example of cooperation between Iran and the United States. Many Iranian nationals say they came to the United States out of fear of persecution at home.
Father Joseph Bach, a member of Friends of Hope at the Border, a Franciscan group that provides support to migrants, said he learned through contacts at a detention facility in Arizona that Christian converts were among those deported. He also said some detainees identify as LGBT.
Christian converts and members of the LGBT community are groups that face severe legal and social repercussions in Iran.
Father Joseph called the deportations “the most unchristian thing possible,” adding, “It’s terrible, it worries me, it’s not good. I call it a death flight.”
The Iranian authorities facilitated the repatriation. An Iranian consular official said the deported nationals “declared their willingness to return after the United States continues to implement anti-immigration and discriminatory policies against foreign nationals, especially Iranians,” according to Iran’s judicial agency Mizan News Agency.
However, one detainee interviewed by the BBC said not all those deported were willing to return.
One potential deportee told the BBC that he and his partner entered the US on foot from Mexico earlier this year. Speaking at an immigration detention center in Arizona, he said he feared for his life if returned to Iran.
The latest expulsions came as already deeply tense relations between the two countries worsened in June after the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The deportations underscore the U.S. government’s tough stance on immigration under President Donald Trump, who has made border security and reducing unauthorized immigration central to his political agenda.
