By: SAFIYAH RIDDLE Courtesy AP News
Riddle is a national law enforcement reporter based in Los Angeles, California.
LOS ANGELES — U.S. immigration officials coordinated directly with the Iranian government to deport more than 100 Iranians on three separate flights in late 2025 and early 2026, according to hundreds of emails released Tuesday, revealing a working relationship between the two governments despite escalating tensions and an active military conflict.
The emails, obtained by the National Iranian American Council and made public Tuesday, offer the most detailed account yet of how U.S. and Iranian officials collaborated to arrange deportation flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026. The correspondence shows that Iranian officials exerted some influence over which Iranians in U.S. custody were sent back, and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials accommodated last-minute changes to deportation lists at Iran’s request.
« Per request from the Iran Embassy I added a few cases, » one unnamed ICE official wrote in late August, a month before the first flight. Just over a week later, an official with the same job title moved to make another change after meeting with the « Director at the Iranian Embassy. »
« Iran has requested that I amend the previous manifest and expedite the removal process, » the official wrote.
In a Sept. 26 email — three days before the first flight left U.S. soil — an ICE official said the Iranian Embassy was still requesting that three additional Iranians be placed on the flight. It remains unclear who ultimately boarded the plane, which ended up much smaller than initially planned. Iranian officials were still making requests the day the flight departed, though one official wrote that those requests were denied.
Iran Handpicked Some Deportees
Iranian officials acknowledged in September 2025 that as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump administration, saying most had crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally while others faced separate immigration issues.
It is unclear from the emails how frequently U.S. officials had direct contact with the Iranian government. Some messages were conveyed through Qatari officials, who helped charter the flights through Doha; others referenced regular meetings with the « Iranian delegation, » the « Director at the Iranian Embassy, » and other unnamed Iranian officials.
The emails do not make clear whether those Iran placed on the lists had volunteered to return or were coerced. Previous reporting by The New York Times revealed that asylum-seekers were among those deported, and that some said they were sent back against their will.
At least one person who was not supposed to be on the flight was deported anyway, the emails show.
« An Iranian not included on the final manifest we sent to the Qatari MOI was boarded on the flight, » one U.S. official wrote. Another responded: « I have no idea how the case/person got through on the plane. »
U.S. Prioritized Deportations Even During the War
The emails suggest pressure to carry out the deportations came from the highest levels of the Trump administration — even as the U.S. and Israel were exchanging strikes with Iran during a 12-day conflict that ran from June 13 to June 24, 2025.
Just days after President Donald Trump’s June 16 social media warning that « Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran! », then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons called the repatriation of Iranian immigrants a « priority » in an email to the agency’s head of removal operations, Marcos Charles, and other staff.
After Lyons’s message, Charles forwarded it to a group of officials whose names are redacted. An unnamed ICE official warned that « removal will prove difficult » amid the conflict because Iran was not issuing travel documents for those eligible for deportation, Iranian airspace was closed during the bombings, and Iranians were themselves fleeing the country.
Charles was undeterred, telling staff to draw up a plan to deport 58 Iranians with final removal orders then in ICE custody.
« We need a plan forward ASAP, » Charles wrote. Another official, whose name is redacted, urged colleagues to « identify a solution for this White House priority. »
The flights departed just months after the U.S. and Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Iran, even as ICE officials acknowledged internally that Iranians were fleeing their homeland.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said the emails undercut Trump’s assertions that the U.S. is at war with Iran to protect ordinary citizens 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.
Iranian Officials Had Access to Detainees
On several occasions, ICE officials arranged for Iranian officials to meet with people detained in the U.S. for unspecified reasons, the emails show — echoing testimony from Iranian asylum-seekers in an unrelated lawsuit filed by an unaffiliated Iranian interest group in July.
Eleven Iranians in immigration detention said in sworn declarations filed in a Washington, D.C., court that they were forced to meet with Iranian government officials while in ICE custody, and that those authorities knew intimate details of their asylum claims.
The lawsuit alleges that U.S. immigration agencies illegally shared confidential information about Iranian asylum-seekers with the Iranian government. While the U.S. may work with foreign governments to coordinate deportation logistics, federal regulations dating to the late 1990s prohibit sharing information that could reveal a person applied for asylum.
The Department of Homeland Security forcefully denied the allegations.
« These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE, » DHS said in a July statement.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment emailed Tuesday afternoon.
A Departure From Decades of Policy
The emails mark a stark departure from a decades-long U.S. practice of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles, and others who fled after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The deportations to a country whose government has a documented pattern of violent persecution against women, religious minorities, and political dissidents have drawn significant criticism from human rights activists.
The newly released correspondence provides the clearest picture yet of the operational mechanics behind the deportation effort — and of the unusual degree of cooperation between two governments that, publicly, remained locked in hostility.