The Trump administration systematically provided Iranian officials with the names and immigration records of Iranian citizens seeking asylum in the United States, allowing them to select individuals for deportation, according to a new lawsuit on Tuesday filed by a civil rights group representing Iranian Americans.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, contends that before the United States went to war against Iran, officials from the State Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement worked directly with the Iranian government to expel migrants, some of whom were dissidents or L.G.B.T.Q. people who had sought refuge in the United States.
The complaint argues that the coordination between the two countries resulted in persecuted Iranians being handed back over to their government, where they risked being tortured or even executed.
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, which filed the suit, argued that the contacts between the Iranian government and U.S. officials violated Department of Homeland Security regulations that bar the disclosure of sensitive information provided by applicants for refugee status and asylum. It asked a federal judge to order the administration to cease cooperation and contact with Iran that have helped facilitate deportations.
In a statement, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security denied that ICE shared “asylum application records” with the Iranian government.
The spokesman added that ICE “provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations and agency policy.”
The State Department declined to comment, citing a policy of not discussing pending litigation.
Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer with Public Citizen, which is representing the Iranian American civil rights group, said the complaint was based on accounts from witnesses who had spoken with Iranian consular officials and detainees who had been called into meetings with Iranian officials who seemed to already possess details from their U.S. immigration files. He said declarations from those witnesses would be submitted to the court when the group filed a motion to block the policy.
Late last year, the Trump administration deported more than 100 Iranians seeking refuge in the United States under a deal the government reached with Tehran to return Iranian citizens facing deportation.
That deal was brokered despite tensions between the two governments, which have not had diplomatic relations since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The United States has for decades welcomed Iranian dissidents and others targeted by the Iranian government. But it came as the Trump administration has sought to expel large numbers of migrants.
The lawsuit claims the arrangement came about after senior State Department officials met in March last year with Iranian diplomats at the Pakistani embassy in Washington, at which time the U.S. government provided the names of at least 150 Iranians it planned to expel.
A spokesperson for the Pakistani Embassy did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
Since then, the lawsuit states that ICE continued to hold monthly in-person meetings with Iranian officials. The monthly sessions took place through at least January, the lawsuit claims, adding that American officials divulged protected information on asylum seekers in the United States and their families at the meetings.
“The U.S. government allowed the Iranian government to select the Iranians deported to Iran,” the complaint said.
Even after the Trump administration upended relations with Iran in February by launching a war that killed the country’s leader, the lawsuit alleges that ICE officials maintained the relationship and “periodically mailed or hand delivered immigration files of Iranians in ICE custody to the Iranian government.”
The two sides “worked in tandem to pressure Iranian detainees to forgo their rights and to coerce them to agree to return to Iran without assurances for their safety upon return.”
“In connection with their immigration cases, the Iranian detainees had previously disclosed detailed information about their identities, families, political opinions, religions, and the reasons they feared the Iranian government,” the complaint said. “The detainees contributed this information to their asylum application files in reliance on the confidentiality protections provided by federal regulations, with the understanding that the information would not be shared with the Iranian government.”
The Trump administration has faced scrutiny from lawmakers about the terms of its arrangement with Tehran, including from Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, who called for an end to the deportation flights in February. But negotiations to end the U.S.-Iran war that scrambled foreign trade and embroiled the Middle East in conflict have overshadowed efforts in response to the deportations.
Among those already sent back to Iran, the lawsuit claims, were asylum seekers who were members of Christian minorities, or who had participated in human rights movements that advocated women’s and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. It cited reporting claiming that some who were returned to Iran had been interrogated by intelligence officials with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
“Each of these groups faces a well-documented risk of imprisonment, torture, or execution upon return to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the lawsuit said.
