ICE deportation flight carrying Iranians turns back and lands in Arizona

By PRANAV BASKAR, HAMED ALEAZIZ, SALMAN MASOOD and ZACH MONTAGUE

A U.S. deportation flight from Arizona carrying Iranians bound for Iran turned around midair and landed back in Arizona early Tuesday morning, according to a legal defense group and a flight-tracking monitor.

The Iranians on the flight were meant to be transferred to Iran from neighboring Pakistan, but the flight turned around after Pakistan abruptly declined to accept them, according to a relative of a detainee who said an Iranian official shared that information, and a U.S. official. Both of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Iranian immigrants were returned from the plane to the Arizona immigration detention facility, the relative said. He added that there were at least nine people in the group.

The Trump administration is planning at least two operations this month to deport immigrants to countries that it does not have diplomatic relations with — Afghanistan and Iran — using Pakistan as the point of transfer. The plans have raised questions among immigration rights groups and lawyers about Pakistan’s role in facilitating deportations to countries where many immigrants fear persecution if they are sent back.

When asked about the deportations to Afghanistan via Pakistan at a news conference Friday, Sajjad Haider Khan, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, said the arrangement was “under consideration.” He added that Pakistan is hopeful that a “mutually agreeable way forward will be reached.”

According to court filings by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, a group of Iranians who are detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Arizona were told by an Iranian government official over the weekend that they were going to be put on a flight to Pakistan with “onward transfer to Iran.” The legal defense fund has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Iranian detainees.

Human Rights First, a Washington-based nonprofit group that tracks deportation flights, said in a statement that the ICE flight, a small Talon private charter jet with a 17-person capacity, departed Mesa, Arizona, just before 5 a.m. local time, turned around about 30 minutes later and landed back in Mesa. The plane then parked at the same ICE staging facility where the detainees were held.

Only a handful of the hundreds of ICE Air flights tracked by Human Rights First in the past year have turned around after departing. A similar flight was scuttled once before: On Sunday, at least eight Iranians detained in Arizona boarded the plane, but the flight was then canceled without explanation, according to Yasmine Chubin, the executive director of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund.

After this story was published, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the flight included people with criminal records and that all of the immigrants had final orders of removal. “The Trump Administration is employing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history,” the statement added.

A spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the rebuffed flight.

The Iranian Interest Section, which represents Iran through an unofficial presence at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, did not respond to requests for comment by email and phone.

In its lawsuit, filed this summer, the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund claims that the Trump administration had illegally shared confidential information about detainees’ asylum claims with Iran’s government, exposing dozens of Iranians to persecution. Among those asylum seekers are Christian converts, members of the LGBTQ+ community and political dissidents, many of whom participated in anti-government demonstrations against Iran in 2022, according to the group’s court filings.

At a hearing in October, two ICE officials responsible for coordinating deportations to Iran testified that they had continued to work with Iranian diplomats even after the two countries went to war, but had never agreed to share the details of asylum claims. The coordination, they said, was strictly to arrange travel and secure passports and other travel documents.

At least some of the Iranians on the plane Tuesday belong to some of those vulnerable groups, Ali Rahnama, an attorney with the legal defense organization, said in an interview. He said he does not know if any of the people on the plane Tuesday had their information compromised.

Rahnama, who met with a group of the Iranian detainees yesterday, said some of them had decided that returning to the Islamic Republic, even “under the threat of missiles,” would be better than remaining in ICE detention. The group marked for the deportation flight includes a mix of people who came recently to America seeking asylum and at least one person who has been in the country for years, Rahnama said.

The United States and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relationship since 1979, and in the decades since then, America has welcomed many people seeking refuge from persecution by the Iranian government.