Lawsuit says US illegally shared confidential information on Iranian asylum seekers with Iran

A lawsuit filed today alleges that the Trump administration’s immigration agencies have been sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with the Iranian government, violating national immigration regulations and endangering countless Iranians, court filings argue.

The lawsuit depicts a coordinated campaign between the US and Iranian governments to identify Iranians in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and pressure them to return to Iran — a marked departure from decades of diplomatic hostility between the two governments and an ongoing war.

Roughly 600 Iranians were put in immigration detention last year, according to public records obtained by the National Iranian American Council. In June, an Iranian woman was among the two dozen migrants the US deported to the Central African Republic — in a stark departure from a decades-long practice by the US of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution forced a large number of Iranians to flee.

The US 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 individual getting deported applied for asylum.

Starting in March 2025, the US State Department arranged monthly meetings with Iranian officials, using the Pakistani embassy as an intermediary, in which US officials shared detailed, sensitive information about detained Iranian immigrants who the US government hoped to deport, lawyers for the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and the Public Citizen Litigation Group write in a complaint.

The information included details about asylum applications filed by people who say they were persecuted for converting to Christianity, for their sexuality or for participating in the Women, Life, Freedom protests against the Iranian government in 2022, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in US District Court in Washington, DC.