ICE, Iran quietly worked together on deporting Iranians to Iran, emails show
Los Angeles — U.S. immigration officials worked with Iran to deport Iranians in late 2025 and early 2026, newly released emails show, revealing a working relationship between the U.S. and Iranian governments despite tensions mounting between them.
Hundreds of emails exchanged between U.S. immigration officials, which were obtained by the National Iranian American Council and made public Tuesday, offer the most transparent play-by-play yet of how the two countries worked together to arrange for more than 100 Iranians to be flown back to Iran on three separate immigration flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026.
The emails show that Iranian officials had some influence over which Iranian immigrants in the U.S. were sent back to their home country, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials apparently heeded some last-minute changes to deportation lists that Iran requested.
"Per request from the Iran Embassy I added a few cases," one unnamed ICE official wrote in late August, a month before the first deportation flight in September. Just over a week later, someone with the same job le moved to make another, unspecified change to the deportation list after they said they met with the "Director at the Iranian Embassy."
"Iran has requested that I amend the previous manifest and expedite the removal process," the official wrote.
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Just days after a June 16 warning from President Trump on social media that "Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!" the former acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, called the repatriation of Iranian immigrants a "priority" in an email sent to the agency's head of removal operations, Marcos Charles, and a number of unnamed staff.
Shortly after Lyons' email, Charles forwarded the message to a group of officials whose names are redacted. An unnamed ICE official responded, warning that "removal will prove difficult" amid the ongoing conflict because Iran wasn't issuing the travel do ents for Iranians eligible for deportation. On top of that, the Iranian airspace was closed to all flights during the bombings and Iranians were fleeing the country.
Charles was unfazed, telling staff in a subsequent email to make a plan to deport 58 Iranians with final removal orders in ICE custody at the time.
"We need a plan forward ASAP," Charles wrote. Another official, whose name was redacted, urged colleagues to "identify a solution for this White House priority."
Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, said the emails undermine Mr. Trump's assertions that the U.S. is at war with Iran to save ordinary Iranians from a repressive regime.
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Eleven Iranians in immigration detention said they were forced to meet with Iranian government officials while in ICE detention. Those Iranian authorities knew intimate details about their asylum claims, according to the sworn declarations filed in a Washington, D.C., court in July.
The lawsuit alleges that U.S. immigration agencies have been illegally sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum-seekers with the Iranian government.
The U.S. government is allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics. However, federal regulations passed in the late 1990s prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the person getting deported applied for asylum.
DHS vehemently disputed the lawsuit's allegations.
"These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE," DHS said in a statement in July.
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