Trump Administration Plans First Mass Deportation Flight to Iran Amid Deadly Protest Crackdown

The Trump administration is preparing to deport at least 40 Iranian nationals to Iran on a charter flight from Arizona as early as Sunday, the first known U.S. deportation flight to the country in decades and the first since Trump threatened Tehran over its bloody protest crackdown. Lawyers and relatives say the group includes at least two gay men with pending asylum appeals who fled likely death sentences after arrests by Iran’s morality police, and who now fear execution if returned to a regime where homosexuality is punishable by death and thousands of protesters have reportedly been killed in recent weeks. One man’s family says he has lived in the U.S. since arriving as a minor, has U.S.‑citizen children, and was picked up by ICE despite years of regular check‑ins on an old removal order for non‑violent offenses. The deportations come as Trump publicly calls Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “a sick man,” labels Iran “the worst place to live anywhere in the world,” urges Iranians to keep protesting and says U.S. airstrikes remain possible, underscoring a sharp disconnect between the administration’s human‑rights rhetoric and its enforcement choices. Advocates are rushing to federal court to try to halt the flight, arguing that many of those on the manifest have never received full, meaningful asylum hearings before being sent back into a country where they could be jailed or killed.