Leaked ICE emails expose how Iranians were sent back, inside secret US-Iran deportation deal

WASHINGTON, DC: The US and Iran might have ended their peace talks without any concrete ceasefire deal for now, but one of the Trump administration's key departments was letting Tehran dominate its decisions.

Leaked emails show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were in touch with Tehran and cooperating with them while deciding who to deport back to Iran from the US.

How ICE and Tehran shaped the deportation list

Hundreds of emails exchanged between US immigration officials offer play-by-play details on how the two countries worked together on the US’s deportation plans.

They jointly arranged for more than 100 Iranians to be flown back to Iran on three separate immigration flights in September 2025, December 2025, and January 2026.

The emails were obtained by the National Iranian American Council and made public on Tuesday, August 18. They revealed a working relationship between the US and Iran, even as their relationship seemed to be deteriorating on the outside.

The emails revealed that Iran had influence over which Iranian citizens should be sent back to their home country from the US, and the immigration officials accepted last-minute requests from Tehran and made changes to their deportation list.

"Per request from the Iran Embassy I added a few cases," one unnamed ICE official wrote in late August. The first deportation plane flew to Iran in September 2025.

The emails further reveal that just over a week later, another official with the same rank made unspecified changes to the deportation list after, as the correspondence shows, meeting with the "Director at the Iranian Embassy."

"Iran has requested that I amend the previous manifest and expedite the removal process," the official wrote.

Iran requested more names days before deportation

One other such email from September 26, just three days before the first flight was scheduled to take off, revealed officials discussing that the Iranian Embassy was still making requests for three more people to be deported.

One official wrote that the request was denied.

ICE officials continued to prioritize the deportation flights even as they acknowledged that Iranians were fleeing the country during the deadly war with the US and Israel in June 2025, the emails show.

The new development was not in line with 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.

Human rights activists have strongly criticized the US for sending Iranians back to their country forcefully.