US officials coordinated deportation flights with Iran, emails reveal
US immigration officials coordinated with Tehran to deport Iranian nationals in 2025 despite an ongoing standoff between the two countries that resulted in this year's war, emails released by a Washington-based lobby show.
Hundreds of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) emails obtained by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and released on Tuesday detail how officials arranged three deportation flights that returned more than 100 Iranian nationals to Iran between September 2025 and January of this year.
The emails suggest Iranian officials had some influence over which Iranian nationals were deported, with ICE officials appearing to accept some last-minute changes to deportation lists requested by Tehran.
“Per request from the Iran Embassy, I added a few cases," one unnamed ICE official wrote in late August, a month before the first deportation flight in September.
Just over a week later, someone with the same job title moved to make another, unspecified change to the deportation list after they said they met with the “Director at the Iranian Embassy.”
“Iran has requested that I amend the previous manifest and expedite the removal process,” the official wrote. Iran does not have an embassy in the US.
Iranian officials said in September 2025 that up to 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump administration.
Most had entered the US illegally through Mexico, while others faced different immigration issues, according to Tehran.
The emails do not make clear how often US immigration officials were in direct contact with the Tehran regime.
It is not clear whether the people Iran put on the list had volunteered to be repatriated or if they were forced. Previous reporting from The New York Times revealed that asylum-seekers were among those deported to Iran, while others said they were deported against their will.
The emails suggest that senior levels of the Trump administration pushed the deportations, even during the 12-day conflict in June 2025.
The emails show that on several occasions ICE officials arranged meetings for unspecified reasons between Iranian officials and people detained in the US.
The accounts echo testimony from Iranian asylum-seekers in an unrelated lawsuit filed in July by an unaffiliated Iranian interest group.
Eleven Iranians in immigration detention said they were forced to meet with Tehran officials while in ICE custody. According to sworn declarations filed in a Washington court in July, the Iranian officials knew intimate details about their asylum claims.
The lawsuit alleges that US immigration agencies have been illegally sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum-seekers with the Iranian government.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) strongly rejected the allegations.
“These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are false,” DHS said in a statement in July.
US authorities may work with foreign governments to coordinate deportations. However, federal regulations prohibit disclosing information that could reveal that a person facing deportation applied for asylum.
NIAC and its founder Trita Parsi — who has long opposed a US war against Iran and instead advocated for greater engagement between the two sides — have been repeatedly accused of lobbying on behalf of the Islamic Republic, allegations both deny.
Parsi was also reportedly targeted for deportation to Iran, a claim denied by the US State Department.