President Trump’s administration held talks with Iran about deporting Iranians even while the war between the two countries was still underway, according to court documents obtained by the Associated Press and unsealed Thursday.

The papers show that as recently as mid-October, officials said they planned to send Iranians back through an unnamed third country, though they did not say when those removals would take place. The documents also show that the administration stayed in contact with Iranian officials during the war in order to submit travel papers and work out “possible avenues for removal.”

The details surfaced in a lawsuit brought by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, which accuses President Trump’s immigration agencies of sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with the Iranian government, a claim the Department of Homeland Security has denied. On Thursday, the group said at least 12 Iranian detainees had been contacted in the past week by the Iranian Interest Section, which operates out of Pakistan’s embassy in Washington, and told they would be flown back to Iran by way of Pakistan. The group did not say when the flight would leave. None of those detainees received anything in writing from immigration authorities, the lawyers said, and one man tried to take his own life after learning he might be sent back. He was among two detainees later moved to a detention center in Texas, a step that often comes just before a removal.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, who is overseeing the case, ordered the government to give the court 24 hours’ notice of any finalized plan to deport Iranians to Iran or anywhere else, and five days’ written notice before any such deportation is carried out. During an October 15 hearing, she pressed Justice Department attorney Dimitar Georgiev-Remmel on the danger of sending people back. “We are at war with a country where the President of the United States has said, as recently as two or three days ago, if not yesterday, that it is essentially lawless,” Reyes said, calling Iran an enemy of the United States and citing President Trump’s remarks that the regime had murdered tens of thousands of protesters. “And what you’re telling me is that the United States of America is going to send individuals back to that region, facing what you and I and everyone who would ever look at this would know would be, at a minimum, a serious threat of certain death.” Georgiev-Remmel answered, “Yes, your honor,” and added, “The government is executing lawful orders of removal.” He told the court that no specific date had been set.

Reyes also warned that she would begin contempt proceedings if the administration ignored her notice order. “We are talking about sending individuals in our care and custody to a country that we have bombed and we may continue bombing, and is a declared enemy of this country,” she said. In a filing Wednesday, the Justice Department argued that her order effectively amounted to an injunction against the government “given the possibility of sanctions and contempt dangling overhead.” The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Deporting Iranians to their home country has historically been rare because the United States and Iran have no formal diplomatic relations and because returnees can face persecution. Hundreds of emails among U.S. immigration officials, however, show the two sides earlier worked together to arrange three flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026 that carried more than 100 Iranians back to Iran. Under President Trump, ICE has also pushed to remove people to third countries with which they have no connection. In June, an Iranian woman was among about two dozen migrants the United States sent to the Central African Republic.

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