US gave Tehran secret data on Iranian asylum seekers, lawsuit alleges

A lawsuit claims the Trump administration is unlawfully giving confidential personal information to Iran about Iranians who applied for asylum to avoid “grave danger” in their native country.

The US is sharing private data with the Iranian government about asylum applicants including pro-democracy protesters as well as members of religious minorities and the LGBTQ community, according to the complaint filed Tuesday in Washington.

Asylum seekers allegedly face deportation back to Iran, where the government could use the information to subject them to persecution, torture and death.

The US has provided “detailed information on hundreds of Iranian detainees seeking asylum,” according to the complaint by the Iranian American Legal Defence Fund and Public Citizen Litigation Group.

The suit says that in March 2025, State Department officials met Iranian officials in Washington to say the US wanted to deport Iranians, including those held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The deportations came even as a dozen US senators wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February to raise concerns about sending detainees to a country where they face persecution or torture, the lawsuit claims.

A day before the Iran war started that month, a State Department official wrote back, “admitting that the Iranian government engages in persecution of religious minorities and has systematically oppressed its citizens through arbitrary detention, coerced confessions, and killing”.