Trump admin doxxed at-risk refugees to death regime in secret meetings: watchdog

While President Donald Trump promised Iranian protesters "help is on the way," his administration secretly handed their immigration files to the government they had fled, a new lawsuit charges.

The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen filed the suit Tuesday in federal court in Washington against Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director David Venturella, and their agencies.

The lawsuit asks the court to stop the practice and notify every Iranian refugee whose files were shared without consent.

"The law couldn't be more clear that information in asylum applications is protected," said Michael Kirkpatrick, a Public Citizen attorney on the case. He called it "potentially a matter of life and death."

The lawsuit alleges that starting in March 2025, ICE held monthly secret meetings with representatives of the Iranian government — conducted through Pakistan's embassy, since the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations with Tehran — and handed over immigration files, asylum applications, and personal records of detained Iranians.

According to the lawsuit, ICE officials also brought Iranian government representatives directly into detention facilities to meet with detainees face to face.

The detainees had shared sensitive details — their identities, families, political beliefs, and religious affiliations — in confidence, trusting they would never reach Tehran.

"The Iranian Government engages in unlawful killings, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, and persecution of political dissidents, religious minorities, and LGBTQ individuals," the State Department found in its own human rights report, the lawsuit notes.

The administration deported more than 100 Iranians on at least three flights, the Washington Post reported, with some called in for interrogation by the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps upon arrival.

The lawsuit says the U.S. government "materially increased the likelihood that Iranian asylum seekers will be detained, interrogated, tortured, or killed upon return."

"This policy has also exposed the Iranian asylum seekers' family members and acquaintances to retaliation in the form of arrest, interrogation, torture, and death," it adds.

Just two weeks before the last deportation flight, Trump posted on Truth Social urging Iranians to "keep protesting — take over your institutions… They will pay a big price," telling them "help is on its way."

"The new policy has continued notwithstanding the June 2025 military strikes by the United States, the massacre of tens of thousands of Iranian protestors by the Iranian Government in January 2026, and the war launched by the United States on February 28, 2026," the lawsuit states.