Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Newly released emails show that US immigration officials worked with Iran to deport Iranians in 2025 and early 2026, revealing direct coordination between the two governments despite rising tensions between them. The emails, obtained by the National Iranian American Council and made public on Tuesday, set out how more than 100 Iranians were flown back to Iran on three immigration flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026.
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The emails, first reported by The Intercept, also suggest that Iranian officials had some say over which Iranian immigrants in the US were sent back. They show US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, making changes to deportation lists after requests from Iranian officials, while deportation efforts continued even during and after the 12-day conflict involving the US, Israel and Iran in June 2025.
In one email from late August, an unnamed ICE official wrote, “Per request from the Iran Embassy I added a few cases,” about 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 list after meeting the “Director at the Iranian Embassy”. The official wrote, “Iran has requested that I amend the previous manifest and expedite the removal process.” In a September 26 email, three days before the flight left the US, an ICE official said the Iranian Embassy was still making requests for three more Iranians to be added. Iranian officials were still making requests on the day of departure, although one official wrote that those requests were denied. It is not clear who finally boarded, and the flight was much smaller than first planned.
The emails show that coordination of the flights remained a high priority even as ICE officials acknowledged internally that Iranians were fleeing Iran during the 12-day war with the US and Israel in June 2025. The flights took place months after the US and Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Iran. The releases have also drawn attention because the US had, for decades after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, welcomed Iranian dissidents, exiles and others who had fled the country.
The Department of Homeland Security did not comment in response to an emailed request sent on Tuesday afternoon. Human rights activists have criticised the deportation of Iranians to a country whose government has been accused of violent persecution of women, religious minorities and political dissidents.
According to the emails, Iranian officials acknowledged in September 2025 that as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump administration. They said most had crossed into the US from Mexico illegally, while some faced other immigration issues. The emails do not make clear how often US immigration officials were in direct contact with Iran. Some messages were passed through Qatari officials, who helped charter the flights through Doha, but other emails referred to regular meetings with the “Iranian delegation”, the “Director at the Iranian Embassy” and other unnamed Iranian officials.
It is also not clear whether the people whose names were put forward by Iran had agreed to return or were being forced out. Earlier reporting by The New York Times said asylum-seekers were among those deported, while others said they were sent back against their will. The emails also show that at least one person was deported by mistake. One unnamed US official wrote, “An Iranian not included on the final manifest we sent to the Qatari MOI was boarded on the flight,” to which another official replied, “I have no idea how the case/person got through on the plane.”
The emails suggest pressure to carry out the deportations came from senior levels of the Trump administration, including during the June 13 to June 24, 2025 conflict between Israel, the US and Iran. Just days after Donald Trump posted on social media on June 16 that “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”, then acting ICE director Todd Lyons described the repatriation of Iranian immigrants as a “priority” in an email to Marcos Charles, the agency’s head of removal operations, and others. After Lyons’ message was forwarded, an unnamed ICE official warned that “removal will prove difficult” because Iran was not issuing travel documents for those eligible for deportation, Iranian airspace was closed during the bombings and people were fleeing the country. Charles then told staff to prepare a plan to deport 58 Iranians in ICE custody who had final removal orders. He wrote, “We need a plan forward ASAP,” and another unnamed official urged colleagues to “identify a solution for this White House priority.”
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said the emails undermined Trump’s claim that the US was confronting Iran to protect ordinary Iranians from a repressive regime. “It demonstrates that the top priority here was to kick out as many people as possible by whatever means necessary,” Abdi said.
The emails also show ICE officials arranging for Iranian officials to meet detainees in the US on several occasions, for reasons that were not specified. That echoes sworn declarations filed in a Washington, DC, court in July by 11 Iranians in immigration detention, who said they were forced to meet Iranian government officials while in ICE custody. According to the declarations, those officials knew intimate details about their asylum claims. The lawsuit, filed by an unaffiliated Iranian interest group, alleges that US immigration agencies illegally shared confidential information about Iranian asylum-seekers with Iran. US law allows the government to work with foreign officials on deportation logistics, but regulations introduced in the late 1990s bar the sharing of information that could reveal a deportee had applied for asylum. DHS strongly rejected the claim, saying in a July statement, “These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE.”
Overall, the emails provide a detailed account of how the US and Iran worked together on deportation flights, including last-minute changes to passenger lists, action during wartime conditions and contacts involving detainees, while leaving unanswered questions over consent, selection and the handling of asylum-related information.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
