Gay asylum-seekers set for deportation to Iran fear execution in their home country

Two gay men who came to the United
States seeking asylum are set to be deported out of the Mesa Gateway
Airport to their home country of Iran, and what their attorney fears
will be their deaths. 

They are scheduled to be deported alongside about 40 other Iranians, to a country experiencing widespread unrest after thousands were killed in anti-government protests. 

Homosexuality is a crime in Iran and the country has executed men for it as recently as 2022.

“That is punishable by death in Iran
and so there is a very, very real — not speculative — concern,” Rebekah
Wolf, an attorney for the American Immigration Council, who is
representing the two men, told the Arizona Mirror. “The last time when
we got very, very close to one of them being deported, he was destroying
all of his documents so he wasn’t carrying anything with him.” 

Wolf declined to publicly identify
her clients out of fear for their safety, but the Mirror has reviewed
court documents and detention records that confirm key details of their
story. 

But even if her client isn’t carrying
any identifying documentation, if he’s deported and arrives in Iran,
ICE will provide the names of all the passengers on the aircraft to
Iranian authorities. The agency is required to cooperate with countries
to which it deports people.

Wolf’s clients, who have no criminal
convictions and who both came to the United States in 2025 on asylum
claims, were arrested by the Iranian “morality police” for being gay years ago. That spurred them to flee the country. 

On Wednesday the men were told that they would be deported to Iran along with other Iranian detainees that include Iranian Christian asylum seekers, Wolf told the Mirror.

“We are just really in the dark on
where these plans came from,” she said. “It is the worst case I’ve ever
had and I’ve been doing this for over 10 years.”

Between 3,000 and 4,500
Iranians were recently killed when their government brutally cracked
down on protesters. The unrest led to the Federal Aviation
Administration issuing a no-fly zone over the region as tensions between Iran and the United States escalate. 

ICE did not respond to a request for
comment about what agreement it had made to allow its deportation
aircraft to fly into Iran and what agreement it may have come to with
the country allowing it to conduct the deportation. 

Wolf’s clients were denied asylum in spring 2025 and have been working on appealing that denial but were not granted stays of removal.
Now, the attorney is working to  appeal the deportation order, filing
emergency orders to ask the courts to adequately assess the merits of
the case, but Wolf said the clients were told their deportation flight
leaves Sunday.

“Against that backdrop in particular,
the fact that the Trump administration would be sending Iranian asylum
seekers back to that regime is essentially a death sentence,” Democratic
U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona told the Mirror. 

Ansari said that her office has been
working to  prevent the deportation flight from happening by reaching
out to the Trump administration, Republican and Democratic colleagues,
as well as the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security. 

Last year, Ansari and U.S. Rep. Dave
Min, a California Democrat, sent a letter to DHS and the Department of
State seeking clarification about why the U.S. began making deportations
to Iran late that year, but Ansari confirmed that they have yet to
receive any substantial response. 

“Given [Trump]’s own statement that
‘help is on the way,’ this is very explicitly a way to help Iranian
people who would literally be sent back to their death if they get on
that plane Sunday,” Ansari said. 

Trump has promised Iranian protestors that “help is on its way” and has not ruled out possible military action in the region. 

Ansari added that the deportations signal a concerning larger issue. 

“It is deeply disturbing because it
demonstrates that there is a relationship between the Islamic Republic
of Iran and the United States,” she said.  

The Mesa Gateway Airport that the two men are scheduled to fly out of plays a crucial
role in ICE’s ramping up of aerial deportation efforts. It hosts the
agency’s headquarters for its “ICE Air” operations, which uses
subcontractors and subleases to disguise deportation aircraft.

The airport has also been part of the administration’s efforts to send immigrants to African nations like Ghana, often when those aboard are not even from the continent. 

The airport is also home to a lesser-known detention facility. 

The Arizona Removal Operations
Coordination Center, or AROCC for short, is a 25,000-square-foot
facility at the airport. It opened in 2010 to little fanfare and can
house up to 157 detainees and 79 employees from ICE, according to an ICE press release from 2010.