Los Angeles — A US deportation flight carrying Iranian nationals, bound for Iran by way of Pakistan, was abruptly canceled on Sunday morning, according to an attorney who spoke with some of the detainees due to be sent back.
At least eight Iranians had been loaded onto a plane in Mesa, Arizona, said attorney Ali Rahnama of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund. The plane was due to fly to the country of Georgia, then on to Pakistan. Rahnama, who filed emergency motions for some of the detainees, said the flight was canceled without explanation.
Court fight over deportations to Iran
Court documents unsealed in recent days in a civil lawsuit brought by the legal defense fund show that the Trump administration said as recently as mid-October that it planned to deport Iranians to Iran through an unnamed third country. The suit, filed in July, alleges that the US government illegally shared confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with Iranian officials.
The US carried out three deportation flights to Iran between September 2025 and January 2026, removing more than 100 Iranian nationals. The new plans come while the war with Iran, which began in February, continues. They show the administration is pressing ahead with its tough immigration crackdown, which has included removals to places that critics say could endanger the people sent back.
Homeland Security declines to comment
The Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not discuss planned removal operations, including flight schedules, passengers, destinations or individual cases. In its statement, the department said the administration is using every lawful option to carry out the largest deportation operation in history.
Over the past week, about a dozen Iranians in immigration detention were told they were scheduled for a flight to Pakistan and then to Iran, according to several attorneys, who later confirmed the plans with the department.
Detainees say Iranian officials contacted them
According to Rahnama, the eight detainees on Sunday's flight were visited by a senior official from the Iranian Interests Section, the Iranian representative office inside Pakistan's embassy in Washington that handles consular matters. They were told Iran's government would move them from Pakistan to Iran.
In the lawsuit, at least a dozen Iranian detainees say Iranian officials contacted them and knew sensitive details of their asylum claims.
US District Judge Ana C. Reyes has not yet ruled on those claims. She has ordered the government to give the court 24 hours' notice of any finalized plan to deport Iranians to Iran or another country, and five days' written notice before any such deportation. In a filing on Sunday, the legal defense fund argued the administration may have broken that order. Later that day the government filed its own documents, which were sealed and not available to the public.
Advocates warn of persecution
The legal defense fund has called for the removal flights to be halted. It said they would be the first deportations of Iranians to Iran since the US-Iran war began. Its executive director, Yasmin Chubin, said it was hard to understand why the US would forcibly return Iranians, including asylum seekers, to Iran during active hostilities, and warned that the consequences could be irreversible, including persecution, torture or death.
Rahnama said at least one person who was on the canceled flight had volunteered to return to Iran after nearly two years in detention, because he wanted to leave what he described as inhumane conditions. It is not clear how many of the others agreed to go.
Source
Reporting based on coverage by The Associated Press (Safiyah Riddle, with Sarah Rankin contributing), published Nov. 8, 2026. Read the original AP report.
