The Iranian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that it is preparing to receive 120 Iranian nationals who have been deported from the United States.
Many of these individuals have been identified as illegal immigrants who entered America via the southern border with Mexico.
According to Breitbart, the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV quoted Hossein Noushabadi, the Parliamentary Director General of the Foreign Ministry, as the official who confirmed the acceptance of the deported individuals. PressTV, known for its often vitriolic content against the United States, reported the return of the Iranians in a surprisingly neutral article.
It stated that President Donald Trump has increased the number of aggressive deportations due to years of insufficient enforcement, including under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
The decision by Tehran to accept its returned nationals without incident is a notable deviation from the typically contentious relationship between the repressive Islamist regime and the United States. This decision is particularly striking given the recent restoration of pre-agreement sanctions on Iran by the other Western members of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, with the support of the United States.
US Immigration Service is planning to expel about 400 Iranians currently living in the United States, most of whom entered illegally, in light of the new approach of the U.S. government, which has an anti-immigrant approach, Noushabadi reportedly stated. He did not clarify whether the 120 individuals en route to Iran are separate from the 400 total expected to return. He further explained that those returning will fly out of the United States to Qatar, where they will be processed and then returned to Iran.
Interestingly, Noushabadi claimed that not all those deported entered the country illegally. Some, he said, had residence permits, for reasons stated by the U.S. Immigration Service, they decided to include them on the list. Some of these individuals reportedly had their asylum requests denied.
Despite the Iranian regime's long-standing record of human rights abuses against its own citizens, Noushabadi insisted that Tehran had demanded Washington be sensitive to respecting the rights of Iranian immigrants.
He also assured that the individuals in question would face no restrictions upon returning home, beyond the general repression that all Iranian citizens face under the Islamist regime. He clarified that these individuals had not violated Iranian law and did not suggest that any of them were fleeing political persecution or were dissidents.
The PressTV report followed a claim in a leftist newspaper that the deportations were occurring. The independent outlet Iran International reported that the Iranians were flying out of Louisiana on Monday and would first land in Qatar.
It also noted that the Trump administration had previously deported Iranians this year, but not back to Iran: Earlier this year, groups of Iranians, including converts to Christianity who face possible persecution at home, were flown to Costa Rica and Panama.
The U.S. State Department has been working this year to convince nations whose citizens enter the United States illegally to accept them as deportees. The most high-profile cases of such negotiations have been in Latin America, where some nations friendly to the Trump administration, most prominently El Salvador, have reacted positively to welcoming their citizens home.
The government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele even offered in February to take in citizens of third-party countries for a fee.
Outside of Latin America, the Trump administration has also engaged in large-scale deportations to other friendly countries. In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials raided a factory and apprehended 300 South Korean nationals working in the United States without proper paperwork, which upset the leftist government in Seoul.
A senior State Department official described negotiations to repatriate illegal immigrants as a core success of the administration so far. Illegal immigration, we have made huge strides on that, the official said. In the first months of this administration, where everybody in the region is taking their own citizens back. We have other countries that are cooperating with us in trying to deal with people who cant be returned to their own countries and finding them a suitable and safe outcome.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on September 23 that, as of that date, 2 million illegal immigrants have either been deported or voluntarily left America during President Trumps second term in office. If the current pace of deportations continues, ICE is on track to deport 600,000 illegal immigrants by the end of the first year of Trumps second term in office.
Ramped-up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day and is sending a clear message to anyone else in this country illegally: Self-deport or we will arrest and deport you, DHSs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
This statement underscores the Trump administration's commitment to enforcing immigration laws and protecting American citizens.
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