The Trump administration is deporting Iranian asylum-seekers, including Christians, to Iran under a new agreement — even though administration officials have slammed the country as a restrictive regime that sponsors terror attacks, persecutes religious minorities and executes prisoners who are forced to confess to crimes under torture.
“I’ve never seen something like this,” Ara Torosian, an Iranian refugee and pastor of a Christian church in California, told NOTUS in a phone call Wednesday. “I’ve never seen even the immigration law in America treat asylum-seekers like this. I’ve never seen it in the last 15 years. It’s so sad.”
Torosian said he has spoken with the loved ones of some of the Iranians deported at the end of September, as well as people who witnessed the flight’s arrival. He estimated between 10 and 15 of the people onboard were Christians, a group particularly at risk of oppression in Iran.
The State Department’s most recent report on religious freedom in Iran notes that Iranian law specifies the death penalty for “enmity against God” and criminalizes proselytizing “that contradicts or interferes with the sacred law of Islam.”
Trending
“All removals were either aliens who have a final order of removal or who have requested voluntary departure,” a White House spokesperson told NOTUS, adding that the administration redacts asylum application information to protect deportees.
Torosian said he visited GOP lawmakers’ offices earlier this year to urge protection for Iranian asylum-seekers.
“They listened,” he told NOTUS. “But it’s just — they’re busy.”
America’s asylum system is designed to prevent people who face persecution from being sent back to repressive governments. Now, as President Donald Trump’s mass deportations ramp up, asylum-seekers who likely have valid claims are getting caught up in ambitious removal quotas. Iranians, Venezuelans, and America’s Afghan allies who assisted in the 20-year war against the Taliban, among other asylum-seekers from around the globe, are at imminent risk of being returned to countries where their lives may be in danger.
It’s a weighty moment in U.S. immigration policy — but Republican lawmakers don’t seem to be weighing it at all. And when pressed, it’s clear they’d really rather not talk about it.
NOTUS reached out to each GOP member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Homeland Security Committee — 39 lawmakers — this week to ask if they had any concerns about deporting Iranian Christians to Iran and if they’d looked into the September deportation flight.
Many of those lawmakers have condemned Iran’s oppressive policies in the past. But none of their spokespeople provided comments, even when given more than 24 hours to do so. And in interviews in person on Wednesday, Republican senators largely dismissed questions about the removals by saying they knew nothing about the flight to Iran and couldn’t possibly comment.
“I don’t know anything about it at all,” Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota told NOTUS. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
A broader question, then: Is Rounds confident the Trump administration is prioritizing the right people for removal in its mass deportations?
“I don’t know what was involved,” he said, before acknowledging: “On the surface, it doesn’t sound good.”
“I would have to get the rest of the story on that,” Sen. James Lankford, a Southern Baptist pastor, echoed, also declining to comment.
And Sen. Ted Cruz, a fierce critic of Iran, told NOTUS to “call our press office on that,” when asked if he thinks Iran is a safe place to send Christian refugees. Earlier this year, Cruz described Iran’s government as “rogue and illegitimate.”
His spokesperson did not respond to emailed questions or a phone call from NOTUS on Wednesday. Neither did Sen. Pete Ricketts’ spokesperson, after the Nebraska Republican said to contact his office.
“We’ll give you a statement,” he said.
One Republican, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, expressed some discomfort with the situation.
“In the case of a professed Christian who is fleeing persecution, I would think that they would deserve a heightened level of deference or a heightened level of scrutiny in a way that would try to protect them from subsequent persecution,” she told NOTUS.
Is Lummis confident the Trump team is doing that?
“All I can say is I would think so,” she said. “But I haven’t looked into it.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the deportations “horrific.”
“The chances that they are going to be mistreated there seem to me to be very high,” he said. “I can write the administration a letter asking why did they do it, but they probably won’t even answer. I’m not getting answers.”
“Now, if Republicans write letters, they are getting answers,” Kaine told NOTUS. “So maybe I should encourage some of my colleagues to do that.”
Authors
