Donald Trump’s administration has deported at least one Iranian woman who sought asylum in the U.S. to a violence-plagued African nation, according to immigration lawyers.
She was among roughly two dozen people deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Central African Republic, where the State Department tells Americans “do not travel” due to risk of “unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health and terrorism.”
At least three Iranian women who were protected by court orders — including women who converted from Islam to Christianity — were initially targeted for removal to the Central African Republic despite fear of persecution and violence in their home country in the midst of the ongoing U.S.-led war.
Lawyers and groups advocating for the deportees have called Thursday’s late-night deportation flight a death sentence.
“These reckless actions unfortunately reflect a total disregard for the law, due process of these detainees, and the wellbeing of Iranians as a whole,” according to Jamal Abdi, president of National Iranian American Council.
open image in galleryTwo Iranian women received 11th-hour emergency court orders temporarily barring their removal while judges reviewed whether the government was lawfully deporting them, according to immigration lawyer Sahar Jalili Pawelski.
Other deportees on the flight were from Afghanistan, Armenia, Georgia, Jordan and Turkey, according to the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund.
“Critically, these individuals would arrive with nothing and no one,” according to the legal advocacy group.
“CAR’s official languages are Sango and French; neither of which these Iranian asylum seekers speak,” the group said in a statement. “They would have no familiarity with local customs, no knowledge of how to navigate an environment defined by active armed conflict, and no understanding of which areas, actors, or interactions pose immediate danger.”
Arriving as a complete stranger — in a country with no guaranteed legal recourse to leave or seek aid in another country — “is itself a life-threatening condition,” the group said.
At least one deportee was forced to leave behind a wife and children in the U.S., according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“The Trump administration is racing to put people on planes and send them to countries they have no connection to, treating human beings as cargo instead of people with rights,” according to Korbin Felder, Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“This is a deliberate attempt to evade judicial review — and it amounts to a death sentence for our client,” according to Felder said.
open image in galleryThe Trump administration has targeted several other Iranian immigrants for removal during the U.S. war in Iran, including vocal opponents of the war, LGBT+ asylum seekers and Christian converts, according to lawyers and advocates who represent them.
A deal to send deportees to the Central African Republic was discussed during a May 18 meeting in Bangui, according to Reuters, which first reported the arrangement.
“Central African Republic will indeed take in, within the framework of agreements with the U.S., immigrants deported by American authorities,” an official told the outlet.
The country, among the poorest in the world, has been in the grips of civil war between pro-government forces and armed militias.
The Russian paramilitary contractor Wagner has effectively controlled the nation’s security apparatus for nearly a decade. Mercenaries with the group have also served as personal bodyguards to the president.
Critics have feared that a military partnership with Russia and Iran could place Iranian nationals in the middle of “uniquely dangerous territory” in the Central African Republic.
Deportees could potentially be perceived as “connected to a Russian-allied state by some factions” within the civil conflict “while simultaneously marked as arrivals from a U.S. adversary by others,” according to the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund.
open image in galleryThe Trump administration has inked a series of secret agreements with nearly two dozen countries — including poverty-stricken and war-torn nations in Africa — to receive immigrants who cannot be legally sent back to their home countries.
But lawyers and advocates say the administration is abusing a legal loophole by allowing other countries to return them to their home countries instead.
“After everything these Iranian women have been through over the course of years — in Iran, in ICE detention in the United States, now being shackled on a plane to a third country in Africa they have zero association with,” said Rep. Yassamin Ansari, the first Democratic Iranian American member of Congress.
“My heart breaks for these women. It’s evil beyond words,” she said. “This is the United States’ legacy under the Trump regime.”
Homeland Security did not respond to The Independent’s request for additional information about the removal flights but reiterated threats of removal to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT and the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
“If you come to our country illegally, you could end up in CECOT, GITMO, or another third countries [sic],” a spokesperson told The Independent.
“The Trump Administration is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised,” the statement added. “Anyone who has been deported received full due process.”
More than 17,500 immigrants have been deported to at least 21 third countries since Trump took office, according to a recent report from Human Rights First and Refugees International.
They frequently end up in hotels, shelters and prisons, while the U.S. sends cash-strapped foreign governments — including countries with records of human rights abuses — millions of dollars in what critics call a legally dubious “outsourcing” of immigration enforcement.
The administration has pledged at least $44 million to more than 30 countries who agreed to take deportees from the U.S., the report found.
It’s a “cruel and lawless foreign policy that treats human lives as bargaining chips,” according to Human Rights First president Uzra Zeya, a former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.
“The more than 30 countries pressured into these deals are not merely complicit — they are active partners in violating international law and eroding the norms that uphold it,” Zeya said.