A lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court accuses the Trump administration of secretly handing over confidential immigration records belonging to Iranian asylum seekers directly to the Iranian government — a charge the administration is calling completely false.
Attorneys from the left-leaning Public Citizen Litigation Group brought the case on behalf of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, filing it in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
According to the lawsuit, the Trump administration began a policy last year of supplying Iran with “confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States.”
The filing described many of those asylum seekers as vulnerable individuals, stating: “Many of the asylum seekers are pro-democracy protestors, members of religious minorities such as Evangelical Christians, or members of the LGBTQ community who seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran.”
The lawsuit further alleged that this practice continued even after last year’s U.S. military strikes against Iran during the Israel-Iran war, Iran’s crackdown on protesters, and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran that began on February 28.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, pushed back hard against the accusations. “These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE,” the agency said in a statement, adding: “ICE is committed to ensuring that illegal aliens are informed of their right to communicate with their consular representatives.”
The lawsuit alleged that Iranian detainees who met with an “Iranian Interest Section official” reported that the official appeared to already know the details of their individual immigration cases, including the specifics of their asylum applications. Because Iran does not maintain a consulate in the United States, the lawsuit noted that consular functions for Iran “were handled by the Iranian Interest Section housed within the Embassy of Pakistan.”
ICE has been at the center of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement and deportation efforts. Human rights organizations have widely criticized those efforts as violations of free speech and due process, and have raised concerns about racial profiling, particularly affecting ethnic minorities. The Trump administration has defended the policies as necessary to curb illegal immigration and strengthen national security.
The lawsuit is asking the court to appoint an independent monitor to prevent any further disclosures to Iran and to stop the alleged information sharing with the Iranian government.
