Iranians who seek asylum in America have to explain, in detail, why they fear their government. Of course, it’s not hard to provide such a rationale: Iran is governed by a brutal authoritarian regime. Well, a lawsuit filed in July against the Trump administration claims that it has essentially been snitching on Iranian asylum seekers to the very government they’re seeking asylum from, one we’ve spent much of this year bombing. According to the suit, ICE handed the Iranian government its files, including “detailed information about their identities, families, political opinions, religions, and the reasons they feared the Iranian government.”
Now the administration wants to skip the paperwork and send Iranians back in person. MS NOW describes the scramble:
In court filings, the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said it had been told that 11 Iranian nationals—10 men and one woman—were scheduled to be flown by [ICE] from Mesa, Arizona, to Islamabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. From there, Iranian officials would take them back to Iran, where they could face persecution from Iranian officials, as well as dangers posed by potential U.S. airstrikes. ... Some of the 11 people expected to be on the planned Sunday flight had been held in detention for months, according to lawyers and a relative of the detainees. ... “If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period,” [a DHS] spokesperson said.
[U.S. District Judge Ana] Reyes threatened to hold any government official who failed to follow her court orders in contempt. “If anything happens that violates either of those two orders, I will hold every single person associated with violating it,” Reyes said last month. “I will start contempt proceedings.” ... It was unclear what kind of notice Reyes had been given about the apparent deportation flight.
So much for “Period.” The Sunday flight was scrapped with the detainees already aboard. On Tuesday, ICE tried again, and the plane turned back midair, reportedly because Pakistan refused to take it. The two attempts and zero deportations represent a blend of cruelty and incompetence that are the hallmarks of this administration.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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