Lawsuit says US gave Iran confidential data on asylum seekers
A new complaint alleges US immigration agencies exposed Iranian asylum applicants to Tehran while pursuing deportations.
By Maya Lindqvist · Senior Technology Correspondent
3 min read
A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses Trump administration agencies of giving Iran confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers held in U.S. immigration custody. The complaint says the disclosures violated federal privacy rules and put applicants at risk from a government many had fled.
The case, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was brought by lawyers for the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen Litigation Group. According to the complaint, U.S. officials worked with Iranian officials to identify detained Iranians and press for their return.
The complaint says the State Department began arranging monthly meetings with Iranian officials in March 2025, using Pakistan’s embassy as an intermediary. Lawyers allege U.S. officials shared detailed information about people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody whom the government wanted to deport.
According to the lawsuit, the information included details from asylum applications by Iranians who said they feared persecution because they had converted to Christianity, because of their sexuality, or because they had taken part in the Women, Life, Freedom protests against Iran’s government in 2022.
The complaint says ICE required detained Iranian asylum applicants at multiple facilities, many of them in southern states, to meet with an Iranian official who already had specific knowledge of their cases. Lawyers allege the disclosures continued after joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began a war in February 2026.
The Associated Press reported that U.S. officials may coordinate with foreign governments on deportation logistics. The AP also reported that federal rules adopted in the late 1990s bar the government from sharing information that could reveal a person applied for asylum.
Ali Rahnama, interim executive director of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement that Congress made those confidentiality rules mandatory because lives can depend on them. Michael Kirkpatrick, an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, said the administration appeared more focused on deportations than on protecting people despite the war with Iran.
The lawsuit asks the court to stop the government from sharing asylum-related information with Iran and to appoint an independent monitor to guard against future disclosures. The complaint names the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin among the defendants.
The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department did not respond to emailed requests for comment Tuesday morning, according to the Associated Press.
Public records obtained by the National Iranian American Council showed that about 600 Iranians were placed in immigration detention last year, according to the AP. DHS said in an announcement that the Trump administration carried out more than 600,000 deportations in 2025 and that about 1.9 million immigrants left voluntarily that year.
Iranian officials said in September 2025 that as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump administration, according to the AP. The AP reported that three deportation flights carried Iranians back to Iran in September 2025, December 2025 and late January 2026, while The New York Times reported at the time that some people on those flights were asylum seekers.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.