- Lawsuit claims Trump admin shared confidential asylum data on Iranians with Iran government
- US allegedly gave Iran info on pro-democracy protesters, minorities, and LGBTQ asylum seekers
- State Dept met with Iran in 2025 to discuss deportations of detained Iranian asylum seekers
A lawsuit claims the Trump administration is unlawfully giving confidential personal information to Iran about Iranians who applied for asylum to avoid "grave danger" in their native country.
The US is sharing private data with the Iranian government about asylum applicants including pro-democracy protestors as well as members of religious minorities and the LGBTQ community, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in Washington. Asylum seekers allegedly face deportation back to Iran, where the government could use the information to subject them to persecution, torture and death.
The US has provided "detailed information on hundreds of Iranian detainees seeking asylum," according to the complaint by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen Litigation Group. The suit says that in March 2025, State Department officials met with Iranian officials in Washington to say the US wanted to deport Iranians, including those held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The deportations came even as a dozen US senators wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February to raise concerns about sending detainees to a country where they face persecution or torture, the lawsuit claims. A day before the Iran war started that month, a State Department official wrote back, "admitting that the Iranian government engages in persecution of religious minorities and has systematically oppressed its citizens through arbitrary detention, coerced confessions, and killing."
An Iranian official requested a list of its citizens subject to deportation, and the administration of President Donald Trump provided about 150 names, the lawsuit claims. That was the first of many monthly meetings where the US has shared immigration files about detainees and asked Iran to consider accepting their return, it said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said allegations of ICE sharing asylum application records with Iran are false.
"ICE is committed to ensuring that illegal aliens are informed of their right to communicate with their consular representatives," DHS said in a statement. "ICE provides illegal aliens the opportunity to contact their consular post and facilitates consular access to detained individuals, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and agency policy."
A spokesperson for the State Department said it doesn't comment on pending litigation or private diplomatic discussions. They referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security.
"State Department and DHS regulations prohibit ICE officials from revealing information from asylum applications to foreign governments," Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer for Public Citizen Litigation Group, said in a statement. "But that is exactly what they are doing. Disclosing this confidential information violates these asylum seekers' confidentiality rights and puts their lives at risk."
The last in-person meeting took place in the month before the US-Iran war began on February 28, but "ICE has continued to mail or hand deliver document packages" to Iranian officials, according to the lawsuit. ICE and Iranian officials "have worked in tandem to pressure Iranian detainees to forgo their rights and to coerce them to agree to return to Iran without assurances for their safety upon return."
The coordinated efforts have resulted in at least three mass deportation flights of detainees bound for Iran - in September, December and January, according to the complaint.
"The US government allowed the Iranian government to select the Iranians deported to Iran," according to the complaint. "Many of the Iranians deported to Iran were asylum seekers, and their status as asylum seekers was known to the Iranian government."
The lawsuit asks a judge to end the practice and declare it is arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of power. It also asks for the appointment of a special master to review the files of Iranian detainees to determine which had their confidential information compromised.
The case is Iranian American Legal Defense Fund v. Marco Rubio, 26-cv-2375, US District Court, District of Columbia.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
