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NEW YORK, Sep 30 (APP):The United States deported a planeload of about 100 Iranians to Tehran in one of the Trump administration’s starkest migrant returns, marking a rare act of cooperation with Iran after months of talks, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Citing two senior Iranian officials involved in the negotiations and a US official with knowledge of the plans, the report said a US-chartered flight took off from Louisiana on Monday night and was scheduled to arrive in Iran via Qatar on Tuesday.
The White House and the U.S. State Department have so far made no comments.
U.S. President Donald Trump plans to deport a record number of people living in the U.S. without legal status, arguing that it is necessary after what he describes as high illegal border crossings under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
However, his administration has struggled to increase deportation levels, even as it has created new avenues to send migrants to countries other than their own.
The identities of the Iranians and their reasons for attempting to immigrate to the U.S. were not immediately clear, the paper said, adding that some had volunteered to leave after being in detention centers for months, and some had not.
Some of the deportees had volunteered to leave after being held in detention centers for months, and some had not, the officials told the Times. In nearly every case, asylum requests had been denied or the people had not yet appeared before a judge for an asylum hearing, they also said.
The deportation was recently finalized after months of discussions between the two countries, the Iranian officials said
According to the New York Times, Iran’s foreign ministry was coordinating the return of the deportees, who had been given reassurances that they would be safe and would not face any problems.
The U.S. in February deported 119 people from different countries, including Iran, to Panama as part of an agreement between the two countries.