Gay asylum-seekers set for deportation to Iran fear execution
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A detainee boards a 747 that is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Air Operations at Mesa Gateway Airport on Sept. 23, 2025. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
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.
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“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.