Iran says a second group of Iranians has been deported from the United States, as Washington reportedly moves forward with plans to repatriate hundreds more amid strained relations and ongoing fears for the deportees’ safety under the Islamic Republic’s regime.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A second U.S. deportation flight carrying 55 Iranian nationals has departed for Tehran, Iranian officials confirmed Monday, marking a deepening phase in President Donald Trump’s expanded immigration enforcement campaign. The flight follows a similar repatriation in September, when Iran’s government said it received the first plane of returnees under the administration’s new policy targeting foreign nationals in violation of U.S. immigration laws.
The development comes against a backdrop of renewed hostility between the two nations following the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during Tehran’s 12-day conflict with Israel in June. Human rights advocates have warned that many of the deportees could face detention or persecution upon their return, given the Iranian regime’s record of jailing dissidents and executing prisoners at the highest rate in decades.
According to Iran’s judiciary-linked Mizan news agency, Foreign Ministry official Mojtaba Shasti Karimi confirmed the latest deportation, stating that “these individuals announced their willingness for return following continuation of anti-immigration and discriminative policy against foreign nationals particularly Iranians by the United States.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei also told reporters Sunday that 55 Iranians were scheduled to return, saying the United States claimed they were being deported for “legal reasons and breach of immigration regulations.”
The U.S. government has not publicly commented on the flight, and officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department did not immediately respond to media inquiries early Monday. It was unclear whether the aircraft had arrived in Tehran as of press time.
The deportations highlight a collision between two longstanding U.S. policies: Trump’s determination to remove undocumented or ineligible foreign nationals and America’s decades-old practice of providing refuge for Iranian exiles, political dissidents, and religious minorities fleeing persecution.
In September, Iranian officials said as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under Trump’s enforcement initiative. The first flight that month was reportedly met with limited acknowledgment from Iranian state media, which described the deportees as individuals with “legal or criminal cases.”
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, thousands of Iranians have sought refuge in the United States, where successive administrations have generally granted asylum to those escaping religious or political repression. Iran maintains that only deportees with outstanding criminal charges will face prosecution upon return. However, the regime has a history of detaining dual nationals and Western-linked citizens for use in prisoner swap negotiations.
Tehran has long accused Washington of harboring “terrorists and dissidents,” while U.S. federal prosecutors have charged Iranian operatives with plotting assassinations of opposition figures on American soil.
As the Trump administration continues mass deportation flights worldwide, the Iran transfers underscore the geopolitical complexities of enforcing U.S. immigration law against nationals from adversarial states—particularly those where returnees face an uncertain fate once they land.
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