Iran International
Erfan Qaneifard, an Iranian political activist and author, has been in a Texas immigration detention center for six months and faces possible deportation to Iran, his attorney told Iran International on Friday.
Masoud Peyma, who has represented Qaneifard since 2017, said his client was arrested on March 28 after reporting to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Dallas to register a new address. Qaneifard had recently moved from California after accepting a teaching offer at a Dallas college, he said.
Instead of processing the address change, ICE detained him and sent him to a facility for undocumented migrants, according to Peyma.
Qaneifard is being held at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, which houses more than 700 people and has faced complaints of overcrowding and harsh conditions, US media have reported.
Between 2003 and 2012, he spent long periods in the United States on a student visa or making visits to the country, his lawyer added.
Previous arrest and failed deportation attempt
Peyma said Qaneifard first sought asylum in 2013 but left the United States before the case was resolved. He re-entered in 2017 via the Mexico border, applied for asylum, and was detained at an ICE facility in El Paso until July 2020.
During that detention, the US attempted to deport him through Azerbaijan in 2019, but Qaneifard refused to board a Tehran-bound plane, according to Peyma.
After his release, he lived in Washington and later in California under an “Order of Supervision,” which allowed him to remain in the country but required regular check-ins with ICE.
Peyma said Qaneifard has never married, has no record with the FBI, and has never been employed by US government agencies. He has supported himself in recent years through teaching, writing and giving interviews.
Risk of forced return
Peyma said ICE contacted Iran’s Interests Section in Washington six months ago, asking for travel papers to deport Qaneifard, but Tehran has yet to respond.
“The risk is real. If he is sent back, his life will be in danger,” Peyma said. “There is no reason for him to remain in detention after six months.”
The lawyer said Qaneifard’s case is being pursued on two tracks. “I have filed a petition in federal court in Texas for his release, given that more than six months have passed since his detention,” he said. “At the same time, a second lawyer has filed an appeal in the immigration court in Virginia with new documents to support his asylum claim.”
Peyma said Qaneifard’s earlier asylum request was rejected in 2018 for lack of evidence. “We hope the new materials on his recent political activities convince the appeals court that deportation would put his life at serious risk,” he said.
Other Iranians deported
The case comes after the United States deported a group of Iranians to Tehran in a chartered operation coordinated with Iranian authorities, the New York Times reported.
The paper said a US-chartered flight took off from a military airport in Louisiana, stopped in Puerto Rico to pick up more deportees, and then continued to Doha, Qatar, before passengers were transferred to another chartered plane to Tehran.
Iranian officials told the Times that ICE had initially said 120 people would be on the flight, but later notified them only 55 were on board, with the rest to follow. Many of those deported had spent months in US detention facilities with asylum claims rejected and accepted return because the alternative was deportation to third countries such as Sudan or Somalia, the Times said.
Immigration attorney Ali Herischi told Iran International that some deportees were political dissidents or Christian converts. He said they were shackled on flights, separated from their families, and their belongings and documents were handed to Iranian authorities. “That is very dangerous,” he said.
The New York Times reported the deportations followed months of talks between Washington and Tehran. US officials have not publicly confirmed the details.
The deportations were part of a larger operation that returned 120 Iranians from US custody to Tehran.
Ali Herischi, an immigration attorney at Maryland-based Herischi & Associates, told Iran International that one of his clients is a political dissident and the other a Christian convert.
Both had crossed into the United States from the border with Mexico to claim asylum. The dissident’s wife, who recently gave birth in the United States, is now caring for their three-month-old child alone.
“She is devastated,” Herischi said. “There’s significant uncertainty about the future and when they can reunite.”
Herischi said neither client consented to deportation, warning that their files, phones and documents were handed to Iranian authorities.
“Unfortunately, their belongings — including their files, evidence and cell phones — have been handed to Iranian authorities. That’s very dangerous.”
The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond an Iran International request for comment.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that a US-chartered flight carrying over 100 Iranians left a military airport in Louisiana, stopped in Puerto Rico to pick up additional deportees, and then continued to Doha, Qatar, before the passengers were transferred onto another chartered flight to Tehran.
Herischi estimates as many as 220 people were deported, though some were left in Qatar. The deportees, he added, were denied the chance to fully argue their asylum cases per rules during the Trump presidency that restricts claims by those who entered through the southern border.
‘Pick your poison'
Earlier this year, the United States deported another group of Iranians — many of them Christian converts — to Costa Rica and Panama, despite the risk of persecution they could face back home.
According to Herischi, deportees were sometimes presented with a choice: “ICE would say, 'either you consent to deportation to Iran, or we send you to Somalia or Sudan.' It was, 'pick your poison.' In the case of my clients, they didn’t even get that. They just said, you’re done, let’s go.”
The deportation flight, The New York Times reported, followed “months of negotiations” between Washington and Tehran, citing two senior Iranian officials involved in the talks and a US official with knowledge of the plans.
According to the Times, the State Department first approached Iran’s interests section in Washington about coordinating deportations three months ago. Iran had to verify identities and issue travel documents for some detainees.
Herischi said, “We need to know what has been exchanged in price of deportation of those individuals... Whether Iran had any influence on the list of deportees or set the priority of who is going to accept.”
The move, Herischi added, risks normalizing Iran’s human rights record and undermining America’s stated commitment to protecting persecuted minorities. “It’s like, oh, it’s just a normal country, why do we care? That’s not right.”
