A gay couple who fled Iran and sought asylum in the United States are now facing deportation back to their home country, where they could be executed under Iran’s laws criminalizing homosexuality.
The men — in their late 30s and early 40s — were initially part of a group of more than 40 Iranian nationals, including Christians fleeing religious persecution, who were scheduled to be deported on a flight departing Arizona’s Mesa Gateway Airport on Sunday, January 25.
Rebekah Wolf, an attorney with the American Immigration Council, which represents the couple, said her clients would likely face public execution if returned to Iran.
“[Homosexuality] is punishable by death in Iran and so there is a very, very real — not speculative — concern,” Wolf told the Arizona Mirror. “The last time we got very close to one of them being deported, he was destroying all of his documents so he wasn’t carrying anything with him.”
Wolf added that even if her client carries no identifying documents, ICE would still provide Iranian authorities with the names of all passengers on the deportation flight, as required under deportation cooperation agreements.
Wolf said her clients — whose names she declined to disclose — fled Iran in 2021 after being arrested by the country’s so-called morality police for same-sex conduct. They were released while awaiting sentencing and ultimately escaped the country, entering the United States at the southern border in January 2025, during the final days of the Biden administration.
According to the Advocate, the men arrived with a third LGBTQ individual, a woman, who was also detained by ICE. Represented by Wolf, the woman was granted asylum after a 45-minute hearing and released after the government declined to appeal the ruling.
The couple, who lacked adequate legal representation before the American Immigration Council took their case, were denied asylum in the spring of 2025. At the time, deportations to Iran were not occurring due to the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries. That changed last summer, when the U.S. quietly resumed removal flights to Iran.
Wolf, who has described the men’s initial asylum hearings as “fraught with bias,” has pursued appeals and filed emergency motions seeking a reassessment of the case. On Friday, January 23, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver issued a stay of removal for one of the men.
Wolf told LGBTQ Nation that ICE retains sole discretion over deportations and could remove the man’s romantic partner from the flight even without a court-issued stay. The partner allegedly suffered severe medical neglect in ICE custody, losing 40 pounds and becoming so weak that he required a wheelchair.
Wolf has also said that ICE generally maintains it may deport non-citizens once a final removal order is issued, even if appeals are still pending.
LGBTQ Nation later reported that, according to the American Immigration Council, neither man was aboard the January 25 deportation flight to Iran.
Wolf described the couple’s cases as “textbook” asylum claims. “People from a country where who they are is criminalized and punishable by torture or death — that is literally the definition of an asylum seeker,” she said.
One of Wolf’s clients told CNN that he and his partner would be executed if returned to Iran, urging the U.S. government not to deport asylum seekers to a country where dissent is violently suppressed.
“If you care about the people, please let us stay,” the man said. “We are not bad human beings. We love this country. If we could live in this country, we will love it more than we love our homelands because our homeland is captured. It’s ruined. It’s destroyed by the government of Iran.”
A senior Trump administration official told CNN that “while the administration does not typically comment on specific flights to protect operational security, any individuals being deported would have Executable Final Orders,” meaning a federal judge has ordered their removal from the United States. The statement appeared to bolster Wolf’s argument that the administration prioritizes deportations over humanitarian considerations.
U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) told the Arizona Mirror that reports of an agreement between the Trump administration and Iran to return asylum seekers were “deeply disturbing.” She and U.S. Rep. Dave Min (D-Calif.) sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department seeking clarification about why the United States resumed deportations to Iran last summer but said they have not received a substantive response.
“Given [Trump]’s own statement that ‘help is on the way,’ this is very explicitly a way to help Iranian people who would literally be sent back to their death,” Ansari said, referring to Trump’s public support for protesters targeted by Iran’s crackdown.
Wolf said any arrangement between the United States and Iran underscores what she described as the hypocrisy of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
“We’re saying, on the one hand, that we will support the protesters against this horrific regime,” she said. “And at the same time we’re making a deal with that same regime to deport people who have fled to seek asylum.”
The fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents during a January 24 protest in Minneapolis has drawn sharp condemnation from LGBTQ lawmakers, as scrutiny grows over the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement and the conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, was using his phone to record the actions of Customs and Border Patrol and ICE officers who had been deployed to Minneapolis amid protests over a surge of federal agents tasked with arresting and deporting non-citizens.
The Trump administration has proposed two federal rules that would restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender minors nationwide.
The proposed regulations, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), would bar federal Medicaid funds from covering transition-related care for transgender youth under 19 and threaten to strip federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming treatments to minors.
HHS officials told NBC News that CMS will begin the federal rule-making process with a 60-day public comment period, after which the rules could be finalized.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, the first out gay leader of the Israeli parliament, angered the ultra-Orthodox parties within the conservative Likud-led governing coalition after voting in favor of a civil marriage bill last week.
The proposed bill, which was ultimately defeated, was introduced by the centrist Yesh Atid party, the largest faction in the opposition. It would have established a legal framework for regulating same-sex partnerships in Israel, including a couples registry, eligibility requirements, registration procedures, and mechanisms for dissolving civil marriages.
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