KEY POINTS
- Iran says 120 nationals detained in the US for illegal entry will be deported this week.
- A chartered US flight carrying the first group is expected to arrive in Tehran via Qatar.
- US plans to deport around 400 Iranians in total, according to Iranian officials.
- The move, reported by The New York Times, is described as a rare act of US-Iran cooperation.
TEHRAN, Iran: Iran said on Tuesday that 120 of its nationals detained in the United States for entering the country illegally will be returned to Tehran this week, as part of a broader American plan to deport around 400 Iranian nationals.
Hossein Noushabadi, director-general for parliamentary affairs at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, cited by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, said that “in the first step, 120 Iranians who entered the US illegally, most of them through Mexico, will be deported in the coming days.”
State television also quoted Noushabadi as saying that a chartered flight carrying the first group would arrive in Iran within one or two days, via a stopover in Qatar.
The New York Times separately reported that a US-chartered aircraft departed Louisiana on Monday bound for Iran with detainees on board, citing American officials. The deportation, an uncommon instance of cooperation between the two countries, came after months of talks, the New York Times reported.
The United States has not publicly confirmed striking a deportation arrangement with Tehran. The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to AFP.
The New York Times described the move as a rare instance of cooperation between the two long-time rivals, following months of indirect talks.
According to Iranian officials, US authorities intend to deport about 400 Iranians in total, most accused of crossing the Mexican border illegally. Some of the detainees had spent months in immigration detention centres, while others had volunteered to leave, the NYT reported.
Noushabadi said some of those listed for deportation held residence permits but were nonetheless included by the US immigration service. He urged Washington to “respect the rights of Iranian migrants” during the process.
The crackdown comes as US President Donald Trump seeks to increase deportations of people living in the country without legal status, a policy he argues is necessary to curb what he calls record levels of illegal border crossings under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
However, Trump’s administration has faced difficulties in raising deportation levels, even as it has arranged deals to send migrants to countries other than their own. In February, the US deported 119 people, including some Iranians, to Panama under a separate agreement.
The scale of the latest returns marks one of the largest US deportations of Iranian nationals in decades. Tens of thousands of Iranians have migrated to America since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
