Iranian Christians allege U.S. gave Tehran details of asylum claims

Iranian converts to Christianity and political dissidents from the Islamic Republic who sought asylum in the United States made detailed allegations in new court filings, claiming that U.S. immigration officials gave details of their asylum claims to Iran’s government in a bid to ease their deportation back to the country they fled.

At least six Iranians said they were visited in immigration detention facilities by Iranian officials based in the United States who knew details from their asylum cases and used the information to put pressure on them to agree to be returned to Iran, according to the allegations. The alleged disclosure of their asylum claims puts their lives in peril if they are returned home, the Iranian detainees stated.

“I have been identified to the very government I ran away from for my life by the U.S. government,” one asylum seeker wrote in a sworn declaration.

Another wrote that an Iranian official told them if they did not agree to return to Iran, the Trump administration would send them “to Africa.”

The new allegations are part of a lawsuit filed last week by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen Litigation Group that argued the Trump administration had routinely provided details about immigration cases and access to Iranian citizens to representatives of the government in Tehran. The lawsuit aims to pause the policy and halt deportations of Iranians while those who had their asylum information shared are notified.

The lawsuit names Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) David Venturella as defendants, along with the agencies they lead.

In response to the initial filing of the lawsuit last week, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Lauren Bis, told The Washington Post last week that “allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE.”

Asked to comment on the new allegations detailed in the court filing, the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond.

The State Department declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on pending litigation and “private diplomatic discussions.”

The Trump administration has overseen a dramatic shift in immigration policy since last year, moving to deport hundreds of thousands of people. It has restricted almost all refugee resettlement to just a few thousand white South Africans and sharply limited asylum claims inside the country, arguing the system is abused and overwhelmed with fraudulent cases.

The administration has concurrently waged a war against Iran, striking it militarily last summer and reopening the conflict on Feb. 28 of this year with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and multiple top officials.

The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized the Iranian government, often on human rights grounds, with President Donald Trump telling anti-government protesters on Jan. 13 that “help is on the way.” Trump told Fox News this week that Iran had killed 52,000 people in protests this year, a figure considerably higher than other public assessments by U.S. officials.

“It’s shocking to think that at the same time the United States is engaged in hostilities with Iran, that the United States is handing over immigration files from ICE to the Iranian interest section in Washington,” Michael Kirkpatrick, a Public Citizen attorney involved with the complaint, said Tuesday. “These files are full of extremely confidential and sensitive information.”

The United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran. Instead, the government in Tehran is represented in Washington by the Iranian Interests Section at the Embassy of Pakistan. Despite travel restrictions on Iranian diplomats in the United States, the lawsuit alleges that Iranian officials visited ICE detention centers in Texas and Arizona.

The new details are part of a call for a preliminary injunction filed by the claimants with the U.S. District Court in D.C. The new filing includes detailed evidence it says supports the allegations at the heart of the lawsuit: That the administration breached the confidentiality protections of potential Iranian deportees that were guaranteed under U.S. immigration law by sharing their asylum claims with Tehran, potentially putting their lives in danger.

Accounts from 11 Iranian citizens who have been detained by U.S. immigration services are included in the injunction. Nine of the citizens describe themselves as converts to Christianity; the other two describe how they were involved in the “Woman, Life, Freedom movement” protests in 2022 that began after the death of a young woman who was arrested for not covering her hair.

The names of the Iranian claimants are redacted in the court filing to protect their safety, according to the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund. Six said they talked to an Iranian official in-person while detained, while another said they spoke to an Iranian official on the phone from detention.

The allegations are backed by an account from a lawyer with the IALDF, who says that an Iranian official based in Washington told him that he had held meetings with the State Department and ICE.

The lawyer, Cyrus Mehri, writes in a signed declaration that the Iranian official told him that there was no written agreement on the sharing of information and visits to Iranians in custody, instead just “pressure by U.S. government that we have to accept these people.”

According to Mehri, the Iranian official said he was advised that if Iran did not accept the deportations, the detained Iranians would be sent to a third-country by the U.S. government.

The Iranian official described first meeting with the State Department last March, then arranged regular meetings with officials from ICE, who shared immigration records of Iranians, Mehri writes in his declaration.

The Iranian official estimated his office had received the immigration records of up to 400 people, Mehri wrote, and that he had personally visited around 200 Iranians being held in immigration detention.

Mehri said in a news conference Tuesday that he did not name the Iranian official as he was he did not feel that was “fair” but that the U.S. government knew “exactly who this person is.”

Advocacy groups that track deportations estimate that around 115 Iranian nationals have been sent back to Iran on three U.S. deportation flights. The most recent is said to have occurred Jan. 26, only weeks after anti-government protests there were met with a severe crackdown that is estimated to have left thousands dead.

The U.S. government does not publicize the flights or the number of Iranians deported.

Mehri states that the Iranian official told him that a planned deportation flight in March was canceled after the resumption of conflict with the United States on Feb. 28. The Iranian official said, despite this, ICE continued to share immigration records with his office, Mehri recounted.

The administration has also included at least one Iranian national among a group of people deported from the United States to the Central African Republic, lawyers for the group have said.

The State Department has frequently criticized Iran for human rights abuses in annual reports mandated by Congress, with the most recent release under the Trump administration calling the situation in the country “severe” and worsening.

A 2025 report on religious freedom in Iran by United States Commission on International Religious Freedom found that “Iranian authorities continue to systematically target members of minority faith communities” and that “Christian converts from Islam face grave danger to their personal safety in Iran.”