ICE agent | File photo: Alex Brandon/AP
The United States is deporting Iranian Christian converts back to the Asian country despite the risk of imprisonment and persecution they face for abandoning Islam.
In a BBC report, several Iranian asylum seekers who converted to Christianity, described how they fled their country in fear, only to end up in US immigration centres and facing forced returns.
One of the deportees identified as Majid (pseudonym) said he spent a year in detention after crossing into the US from Mexico in 2024.
Despite presenting evidence of his conversion and the well-documented risks Iranian converts face, he was forced on a plane “even though an immigration judge had already granted him protection from removal five months ago”.
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Another asylum seeker identified in the report is the wife of one Ali, an Iranian Christian convert now residing in the US.
“They deported my wife back to Iran even though she is a Christian. Now Iranian intelligence is after her and me,” Ali told the BBC.
This comes as US President Donald Trump, and a raft of right wing American politicians and public commentators, allege persecution of Christians in Nigeria.
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Trump had in October, redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” in response to allegations of a Christian genocide in the African nation.
He subsequently asked the United States department of war to prepare for “possible action” to wipe out Islamic terrorists targeting “our cherished Christians” in Nigeria.
He also said he would order an immediate end to all aid and assistance to Nigeria.
According to the report, a White House official said recent deportations to Iran involved people who either had final removal orders or chose to leave voluntarily.
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The official added that the government cannot reveal whether a person applied for asylum or had their claim rejected.
