The Trump administration has deported a group of migrants, including an Iranian woman who had sought asylum in the United States, to the Central African Republic — a country the State Department itself advises Americans not to travel to due to civil war, crime and Russian paramilitary activity, lawyers say.
A deportation flight left Louisiana late on Thursday bound for Bangui, the CAR’s capital, carrying people from Iran, Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia and Afghanistan, according to Ali Rahnama, head of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, who has been in contact with several of those on board. The exact number of people on the flight was not immediately clear.
Three Iranian women in the US had originally been scheduled for removal to the Central African Republic, according to Sahar Jalili Pawelski, one of their immigration lawyers. Two of the three secured emergency court orders temporarily halting their deportation while judges examined whether the government’s actions were lawful, though it remains unclear whether those orders prevented their removal on Thursday’s flight.
Rahnama said he was particularly concerned about the case of an Iranian asylum seeker being sent to the Central African Republic, pointing to Russia’s significant influence in the country and Moscow’s close security ties with Tehran. The Wagner Group and its successor organisations have maintained a substantial paramilitary presence in the CAR for years, raising fears that an Iranian deportee could face additional risks linked to that relationship.
According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration has been using deportations to third countries as a means of removing asylum seekers whose home countries will not accept them back, or who cannot safely be returned there directly. Immigration lawyers describe the practice as a legal route around the protections normally afforded to people with pending asylum claims or court orders against removal.
The CAR deportations form part of a much broader pattern. The administration has deported more than 675,000 people since returning to office, according to PBS NewsHour, with a federal judge having ruled the government may continue removing undocumented immigrants to countries other than their country of origin. Other recent cases have included an East African asylum seeker deported to Equatorial Guinea despite what her lawyer described as a strong claim for protection.
The situation for Iranians specifically has drawn sustained criticism from Democratic lawmakers. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February, Senator Tim Kaine detailed earlier deportation flights returning Iranian nationals directly to Tehran — including one in late September that sent 45 people via Qatar, and a further flight in December carrying around 50 people via Kuwait. Kaine wrote that deportees had reported being “made to fill out forms explaining why they had left Iran and sought asylum in America” upon arrival, and being “called in for interrogation by the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.” Representatives Yassamin Ansari and Dave Min separately condemned a January flight that deported Iranian nationals including LGBTQ individuals, who they said “face a death sentence by the regime” if returned.
Department of Homeland Security officials have maintained that all deportations, including those to third countries, are carried out in accordance with due process and existing immigration law.
