The Trump administration held secret talks with Iran on deporting Iranians even as the war there dragged on, court documents obtained by the show. The court documents unsealed on Thursday show the Republican administration as recently as mid-October said it had plans to deport the Iranians through an unnamed third country, although it was unclear when it intended to do so. The judge in the case ordered the government to give the court 24-hour notice of any finalized plans to deport Iranians to Iran or to any other country and five days’ written notice before any such deportation is carried out.
A country that, according to our president, murdered tens of thousands of protestors,” the judge, Ana Reyes, said according to the 15 October transcript that has now been unsealed. A legal group representing Iranians held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said a dozen Iranian detainees had been given notice over the past week that they would be deported to Iran. The legal group, the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, brought the lawsuit in which the transcript was released.
The court documents show that the administration maintained contacts with Iranian officials during the war over the removals, specifically for submitting travel documents and figuring out “possible avenues for removal”. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, and the state department 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 Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said on Thursday at least 12 Iranian detainees have been contacted by the Iranian Interest Section, an Iranian representative office in the Pakistani embassy in Washington that handles consular affairs, in the past week and notified of an upcoming deportation flight to Iran through Pakistan. The group did not say when the deportation would occur. One of those detainees attempted suicide once he learned he might be returned to Iran, according to Yasmine Chubin, the executive director of the organization.
He was one of two people who were subsequently moved across state lines to a detention center in Texas, where detainees are often relocated immediately preceding a removal. None of the detainees who have been contacted have been provided any information in writing from immigration authorities, the legal group said. 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.
The lawsuit depicts a coordinated campaign between the US and Iranian governments to identify Iranians in ICE custody and pressure them to return to Iran – a marked departure from decades of diplomatic hostility between the two governments. The DHS has denied that it is sharing asylum application records with the Iranian government. Hundreds of emails exchanged between US 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.
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