The Kabul Tribune (KT) — The United States has deported about 100 Iranians to Tehran in a rare instance of cooperation between the two governments, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
A U.S.-chartered flight departed Louisiana on Monday and was
expected to land in Iran via Qatar on Tuesday, according to the report, which
cited two senior Iranian officials involved in the negotiations and a U.S.
official familiar with the plans.
The deportations followed months of talks, the newspaper
said. The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a
request for comment from Reuters.
President Donald Trump has vowed to deport record numbers of
people living in the U.S. without legal status, blaming what he calls surging
illegal border crossings under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. But his
administration has struggled to increase removals, even as it created new
pathways to send migrants to countries other than their own.
The identities of the Iranians were not immediately clear.
The Times reported that some had volunteered to return after months in U.S.
detention centers, while others had not. Iran’s foreign ministry was
coordinating their return and assured them they would not face problems at
home, according to the paper.
In February, the U.S. deported 119 people from several
countries, including Iran, to Panama as part of a separate agreement.
