The Iranian regime said on Sunday that it would accept a group of deportees from the United States who have been held for months in U.S. immigration detention centers.
It was the third time Iran has accepted deportees since President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025 – but the first since Iran murdered thousands of its own citizens to put down an uprising this month.
The announcement was made by Iranian diplomat Abolfazl Mehrabadi, head of Iran’s Interests Section in Washington, DC. Iran does not have direct diplomatic relations with the United States, so Mehrabadi’s office works through the Pakistani embassy.
Mehrabadi told Iranian state media that the group of Iranian deportees was scheduled to fly out of Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona and return to Iran via Egypt and Kuwait. He said his office worked with American immigration officials to obtain the necessary travel documents.
Iranian media claimed the deportees were “held for over two months in overcrowded facilities where basic hygiene and medical standards were nonexistent,” causing them to experience a “surge in viral infections” that left over half of the detainees with serious illnesses.
The Iranian Interests Section claimed it had to “intervene” before the deportation flight left the United States to provide “essential clothing and supplies” to Iranian nationals who had been “stripped of their dignity and belongings.”
“Initially, around 40 Iranian detainees were scheduled to depart, but due to weather conditions and the outbreak of measles, the number dropped to 20,” Mehrabadi said.
The Iranian regime has an obvious interest in spreading horror stories about other countries’ detention systems, since a huge number of Iranians are currently imprisoned for protesting and could be facing execution.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said on Tuesday that 6,126 people were killed during the regime crackdown, and over 41,800 were arrested. HRANA said 86 of the dead were children, and 49 were civilians who were not actually involved in any protests.
Some have criticized the Trump administration for deporting Iranians back into the clutches of their murderous government.
Last week, Reps. Dave Min (D-CA) and Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) released a statement saying they were “deeply disturbed” by the Trump administration’s plans for another deportation flight to Iran, in part because the deportees allegedly include “LGBTQ Iranians who face a death sentence by the regime.”
The Democrat representatives said they sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in October “seeking answers about these deportations, given Iran’s brutal authoritarian regime and its well-documented record of human rights abuses,” but they did not receive a “substantive response.”
The Arizona Mirror reported on Monday that two gay Iranian men seeking asylum in the United States were not included in the latest deportation flight. One of the men obtained a temporary stay of removal on Friday from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, while the other was under a medical quarantine due to a case of the measles.
According to American Immigration Council attorney Rebekah Wolf, both of the men fled to the United States last year to seek asylum after they were arrested by Iran’s infamous “morality police.” She insisted their claims of persecution and serious and their asylum appeals should be “very straightforward cases,” but they were denied asylum last spring because they “did not have representation.”
“Up until Sunday morning, the last we had heard was that there was not going to be a flight on Sunday. The lack of communication or transparency between DHS and Congress is pretty telling about the sort of state of things,” Wolf complained.
A source told CNN on Tuesday there were only 14 Iranians on the deportation flight, despite earlier reports that “dozens” of people would be included. Many of the seats were reportedly left unfilled due to measles infections at an Arizona detention center.
One of the gay men whose deportation was delayed at the last minute made a personal appeal to President Trump via CNN, while asking to remain anonymous out of concerns for his safety.
“We are not bad human beings. We love this country. If we could live in this country, we will love it more than we love our homelands because our homeland is captured. It’s ruined. It’s destroyed by the government of Iran,” he said.
The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed on Monday that the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has arrived in the Middle East via the Indian Ocean. A U.S. official told CBS News that the strike group may not be “on station” yet, meaning it has not arrived at its final destination.
President Trump said last Thursday that he had ordered an “armada” to take position near Iran, and the U.S. would be “watching them very closely.” He hinted military action was possible if Iran began mass executions of captive protesters or resumes enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.
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