A Week in the News with IALDF

“Some of those same asylum applicants, and others who could face the same death, are being sent back — all against a backdrop of further and intensifying U.S. bombing of Iran,” Chubin said. “This flight must be stopped.”

At least eight Iranians were loaded onto a plane Sunday morning in Mesa, Arizona, for a deportation flight headed to the country of Georgia, then on to Pakistan, according to Ali Rahnama, an attorney with the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund who filed emergency motions on behalf of some of the Iranian detainees. The flight was canceled without explanation, he said.

“We have received credible information from multiple independent sources indicating that the U.S. government is proceeding with plans to deport Iranian nationals, including asylum seekers, to Iran, via Pakistan, despite a federal court order requiring five business days’ advance notice,” Yasmine Chubin, the group’s executive director, told MS NOW.

Mr. 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 Nov. 10 flight had traveled over Show Low before circling back to Mesa Gateway Airport, where the Iranian nationals were taken to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Florence, said Yasmine Chubin, executive director of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund.

“They essentially told us that anything would be better than more time in ICE detention,” Chubin said.

“We’re at war and it’s unsafe to send anyone back to Iran,” Chubin said. “We find it really alarming, both the level of coordination between ICE and Iran and the unrestricted access officials have to Iranian nationals.”