‘It Feels Like I’m in a Nightmare’: Inside the First Deportation Flight to Iran

In the hours before dawn one day in early October, Mehrdad Dalir found himself stranded at a bus station in Iran. He recalls feeling the heavy gaze of passers-by and shivering. He looked out of place, dressed in a prison outfit of sorts: gray sweatpants and sweatshirt, and a pair of blue plastic slippers.

About two days earlier, U.S. immigration authorities had taken Mr. Dalir from a detention facility inside an airport in Alexandria, La., and forced him aboard a plane to Iran as part of an unusual mass deportation to a country with a poor human rights record that the United States had bombed earlier this year in an effort to set back its nuclear program.

Mr. Dalir, 34, says he was shackled and handcuffed, and not given the chance to change out of the prison clothes he had worn during his time in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Once in Iran, he made his way by metro and bus from Tehran’s international airport to his hometown, Mashhad, in northeast Iran.

After borrowing a cellphone, Mr. Dalir delivered the news to family members still in Mashhad: The United States had sent him back to Iran. “Maman, come and get me,” he told his mother, and broke into a sob. A blue backpack contained all his belongings — a few clothing items, his passport, immigration cards, a cellphone with a dead battery and a $20 bill.

“It feels like I’m in a nightmare,” Mr. Dalir said in a three-hour telephone interview from Iran.

He acknowledged he had entered the United States illegally in April but said he thought he would have a powerful case for asylum because he has been critical of Islamic Shariah law and a political activist. He didn’t expect to be sent back to Iran.

“I did everything in my power to stop them, but the ICE officials didn’t care. They told me, ‘You are either getting on the plane on your own, or we will tie you and send you back.’”

On Sept. 29, the Trump administration deported a planeload of Iranians, including Mr. Dalir, to Iran after reaching an agreement with Tehran. The U.S.-chartered deportation flight was a first. In the past, Iranian deportees were placed individually on commercial flights to Iran. Organizing a plane to Tehran had taken months of negotiations between American and Iranian officials.

For decades, waves of Iranians fleeing persecution found protection in the United States, including many who were at first unauthorized but later gained asylum.

And while, historically, migrants from countries difficult to deport to, like Iran and Venezuela, have languished in detention or lived freely in the United States, the Trump administration is pushing countries from across the globe to take back their own migrants.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the 54 Iranians deported on the flight had a final order of removal or an order granting voluntary departure and they were all given due process. Ms. McLaughlin said among the Iranians deported were “terrorists, human smugglers and suspected foreign agents.”

Ms. McLaughlin said of the 54 Iranians deported on the flight, 23 had ties to terrorism, seven were on the terror watch list and five others were associated with human trafficking networks. She provided the name of one man convicted of having ties to terrorist groups and two others who she said had committed fraud by uploading false and altered photos.

“The Trump administration remains committed to fulfilling the president’s promise to expeditiously, and with the highest standards, deport illegal aliens from the country, ” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.

Iran’s foreign ministry has said that more than 400 Iranians in the United States face deportation and that planning is underway for additional flights.

Mr. Dalir and at least eight other individuals fiercely resisted deportation, according to his and other deportees’ accounts. They repeatedly told American authorities that Iran would persecute them and that they feared for their lives. Among them were Christian converts, ethnic minorities and political dissidents.

This article is based on interviews with Mr. Dalir; another deportee who asked to be identified only by his initials, A.A., because he feared publishing his full name would lead to his arrest; members of each man’s family; U.S. lawyers representing some of the deportees; and three Iranians currently held in ICE detention who knew some of the passengers on the flight.

Neither Mr. Dalir nor A.A. were among those named by Homeland Security for having ties to terrorism or having committed fraud.

The New York Times also obtained the government records of both Mr. Dalir and A.A. and corroborated their accounts of detention and deportation with the information in the files. The Times also reviewed written statements gathered by Mr. Dalir’s father from seven other individuals on the flight who said they had been forcibly deported.

Ms. McLaughlin said that Mr. Dalir and A.A. had entered the U.S. illegally — and were quickly ordered deported. She said both men had been given the opportunity to make a case for their fears of removal from the United States. “Both men had due process, and all of their claims heard. They were found to not be valid and received final orders of removal,” said Ms. McLaughlin, who disputed some of Mr. Dalir’s account of his deportation to Iran.

Although Iran did not take either man into custody upon their arrival, Mr. Dalir and A.A. say they still face serious danger there.

“The current administration fails to prioritize deportees and ignores the grave risks to Iranians seeking asylum at our border,” said Ali Herischi, an immigration lawyer based in Washington, who represents A.A. and a woman Christian convert also deported on the flight. “Fleeing to the U.S. — seen as Iran’s enemy — puts them in peril of persecution back home.”

The road to America

Mr. Dalir’s journey as a refugee began in 2014 when, he said, he fled Iran with his father and younger twin brothers for Turkey. Hassan Dalir, their now 60-year-old father, was a schoolteacher who said he had been jailed and tortured for criticizing Islam and the government. His sons were also political activists, and, the father said, security agents threatened him and his family with violence and death.

In Turkey, the Dalirs registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to find a legal pathway for settling in a safe country. The U.N.H.C.R. recognized all four of them as refugees and called them “protected,” in documents reviewed by The Times.

But a combination of bad timing and shifting policies toward refugees tore the family apart. The U.N.H.C.R. referred the father and twin brothers, who at the time were teenagers, for resettlement in the United States but not Mr. Dalir, without explaining why. His case was instead referred to the government of Turkey, which discourages immigration to the country from the region and denied his asylum request. Officials ordered him to leave Turkey.

The younger brothers resettled two years ago in Raleigh, N.C., where they currently live and work at a Walmart. Mr. Dalir’s father was cleared for resettlement in the United States too, according to documents reviewed by The Times, but because of the time such cases can take, new hurdles — including a pause on refugee admissions — blocked his relocation from Turkey where he has only temporary status.

After Turkey rejected the younger Mr. Dalir, he said, he escaped to Greece, but was arrested and sent back to Turkey. He then set his eyes on the southern U.S. border. After trekking from Brazil to the Darién Gap to Mexico, in April he crossed into California, where he turned himself in to border patrol.

Mr. Dalir was transferred multiple times, from state to state, to different detention facilities. Though immigration authorities conducted a phone interview with him to assess his case, his appeal for protection was denied, and he was ordered deported.

In May he was taken to the Los Angeles airport and handed a ticket for a commercial flight to Iran — the only way ICE was able to deport people to Iran at the time. He refused to board and was returned to a detention facility in San Diego.

Inside detention in June, he staged a hunger strike. His records note that he skipped nine consecutive meals. He says he agreed to end the strike after the head of the detention facility told him he would try to help if he agreed to eat.

At one point, he begged officials to give him a second chance and review his case just so he could survive, government records show.

Over the next several months, Mr. Dalir’s lawyer and family frantically tried to get him another hearing. His brother Mehrzad Dalir, 28, corresponded with the office of one of his U.S. senators, Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, asking him to intervene.

Mr. Tillis’s office appeared sympathetic and engaged with the case and the family, according to correspondences and voice messages shared with The Times. Mr. Tillis’s office informed the family that it had followed up with U.N.H.C.R. and ICE, but ICE officials had refused to reconsider. Mr. Tillis’s office did not reply to requests for comment.

The Flight

Mr. Dalir said he and other Iranian detainees held in Louisiana realized their deportation was imminent when a representative from Iran’s government, Abolfazl Mehrabadi, the director of Iran’s interest section in Washington, showed up at the detention facility to meet with them.

“We worked with the Americans to facilitate the flight because our policy is that we don’t want a single Iranian citizen to suffer in detention,” Mr. Mehrabadi said in an interview. He said he had reassured the deportees that they would face no problems when they landed in Iran.

The flight was the next day.

In what he described as a last act of desperation, Mr. Dalir said he attempted suicide at the detention facility on the day of the flight. He cut his wrists with a shaving razor hidden in his sleeve. Authorities noticed the bleeding, he said, and rushed him to a clinic on site. He said he was then placed in solitary confinement until the plane was ready to take off.

The Homeland Security spokeswoman, Ms. McLaughlin, said that Mr. Dalir had not attempted suicide and had not been put in solitary confinement.

Mr. Dalir recalled panicking when the bus reached the tarmac at Alexandria’s airport and stopped at the foot of an airplane. He screamed, and, crying, he begged, “They will kill me in Iran. Please don’t send me back, please have mercy.”

According to Mr. Dalir and the statements from other deportees, the departure was chaotic, and ICE agents were clashing with some individuals who refused to board. Ms. McLaughlin called accounts of violence by ICE agents “false.” Some deportees requested access to their belongings to discard documents — a Bible, a cross, proof of links to opposition groups — that could incriminate them in Iran.

When A.A. arrived in a separate bus, he said he looked out the window and saw Mr. Dalir being dragged to the plane. He says he staged his own resistance by locking himself in the bus and tying his hands to the seats. A group of ICE agents broke the door and dragged him out.

“You have to kill me first before sending me back,” A.A. who is part of an ethnic minority group in Iran, said he kept shouting.

His wife, Mina, gave birth two months ago in Tennessee to their first child — a son, whom A.A. has not yet met. She was pregnant when they crossed the border into the United States, and they were separated during detention. Mina, still wearing an ICE ankle bracelet, was released to the custody of a relative to give birth.

“My husband would never, ever leave willingly, because more than anything in the world he wants to see his son, and he wants to stay alive for him,” Mina said in an interview. She added she has been told she too faces deportation.

The flight to Iran took nearly 50 hours, with stops in Puerto Rico, Cairo and Doha. All the deportees were shackled and handcuffed for the duration of the flight to Doha. The Department of Homeland Security said the use of restraints during deportation flights is a longstanding protocol and “an essential measure” for safety of both the detainees and the officers accompanying them.

During the flight, A.A. said, he was shouting to others in Persian that they should collectively attempt a last act of resistance in Doha.

The plane landed at a remote military base where a second chartered plane, a Qatar Airlines aircraft, awaited them. Mr. Dalir, A.A. and about eight others staged a protest, laying down on the bus during the transfer. Qatari security agents radioed for more support forces and began beating the men and dragged them out of the bus, Mr. Dalir and A.A. said. Their shackles were removed but they remained in handcuffs until Tehran, they added.

“They used electric tasers to pacify me, and when that didn’t work they put me and another guy in straight jackets and tied us to our seats,” A.A. said.

The government of Qatar said it would not provide a comment on the record, but a Qatari official with knowledge of the flight said Qatar did not receive any requests for asylum and the transfer of detainees was handled in full accordance with international human rights standards and internal security protocols.

Fearful in Iran

A lineup of government officials and security agents in plainclothes was waiting for the deportees when they landed in Tehran.

“We were all so terrified, we didn’t know what they would do to us,” Mr. Dalir said. “Some of the agents were saying, ‘Welcome back to your home,’ it was surreal.”

Iranian officials handed them a two-page form that asked their names, local home address and phone numbers; the names and contact numbers of relatives in Iran; email addresses and WhatsApp numbers; the reason they left Iran; and a description of the route they took to enter the United States.

Iran’s state television broadcast short interviews with several of the voluntary deportees. A man who said he was a nurse said he went to America to seek better economic opportunities. “I was happy from the moment they told me, ‘You will be deported.’ The suffering would end,” he said without providing his name.

Fearing arrest, A.A. fled Iran a day after arriving at the advice of his lawyer, Mr. Herischi. He walked across the border to a neighboring country with the help of smugglers and is now in hiding.

Since returning, three of his fellow deportees, Mr. Dalir said, have had their passports confiscated and were told they were banned from leaving the country.

Mr. Dalir has been changing locations frequently. He said security agents have called his mother several times saying he should report for questioning to the local office of the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, but that he has so far ignored them. He said he wants to leave Iran but is exhausted from being on the run.

“Where would I even go?” he asked. “Which country would take me at this point?”