The Trump administration is deporting a planeload of around 100 Iranians back to Iran from the United States after a deal between the two governments, according to two senior Iranian officials involved in the negotiations and a U.S. official with knowledge of the plans.
Iranian officials said that the plane, a U.S.-chartered flight, took off from Louisiana on Monday night and was scheduled to arrive in Iran by way of Qatar sometime on Tuesday. And the U.S. official confirmed that plans for the flight were in the final stages. All the officials spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details publicly.
The deportation is one of the most stark efforts yet by the Trump administration to deport migrants no matter the human rights conditions they might be sent into. Earlier this year, the U.S. deported a group of Iranians, many of them converts to Christianity who face persecution at home, to both Costa Rica and Panama. The expanding deportation campaign has sparked lawsuits by immigrant advocates who have criticized the flights
For decades, the United States had given shelter to Iranians fleeing their homeland, which has one of the harshest human rights records in the world. Iran persecutes women’s rights activists, political dissidents, journalists and lawyers, religious minorities and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, among others.
The identities of the Iranians and their reasons for trying to immigrate to the United States were not immediately clear. In the past several years, there has been an increase in Iranian migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border and crossing illegally, including many who have claimed fear of persecution back home for their political and religious beliefs.
The United States had long hesitated or had trouble deporting migrants to certain countries like Iran because of a lack of regularized diplomatic relations and an inability to get travel documents in a timely manner. That had forced American officials to either hold migrants in detention for long periods or release them into the United States. The United States deported just more than two dozen Iranians back to the country in 2024, the highest total for years, over the course of several commercial flights.
The two Iranian officials said the deportees included men and women, some of them couples. Some had volunteered to leave after being in detention centers for months, and some had not, they said. The officials said that in nearly every case, asylum requests had been denied or the people had not yet appeared before a judge for an asylum hearing.
The deportation is a rare moment of cooperation between the United States and the Iranian government, and was the culmination of months of discussions between the two countries, the Iranian officials said.
One of the officials said that Iran’s foreign ministry was coordinating the deportees’ return and that they had been given reassurances that they would be safe and would not face any problems. Still, he said, many were disappointed and some even frightened.
In addition to inflicting political oppression, Iran is in the throes of an economic and energy crisis with plunging currency, sky-high inflation, unemployment, and water and power cuts. The economic situation is bound to get even worse with the return of United Nations Security Council sanctions that went into effect on Saturday.
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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