Iranian Deportation Flight Canceled on Arizona Tarmac

An Iranian deportation flight that was set to leave Arizona on Sunday was called off at the last minute, according to an attorney for the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, which is suing the federal government over how it has handled Iranian asylum seekers. The cancellation is an early test of a federal judge’s order requiring advance notice before any Iranian is removed, and it leaves Iranian detainees and their lawyers unsure whether the next attempt will come with days of warning or none.

Ali Rahnama, the group’s attorney, told the Associated Press that at least eight Iranians were put on a plane Sunday morning in Mesa, Arizona, for a flight to Georgia and then on to Pakistan, and that the flight was canceled without explanation. An attorney for the group told ABC News that 11 people, 10 men and one woman, had been scheduled and were returned to detention after the plane sat on the tarmac “ready for takeoff.” The accounts differ on the count, and neither outlet said it had independently confirmed the cancellation. DHS told AP that ICE does not comment on “prospective removal operations,” adding: “As promised, the Trump Administration is employing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history.”

A notice order, not a ban

Can the government deport Iranians to Iran while the war continues? Nothing in the case so far stops it. U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes, who is hearing the lawsuit in Washington, has not ruled on the group’s claims. What she has done is require the government to tell the court within 24 hours of finalizing any plan to deport Iranians to Iran or another country, and to give five days’ written notice before any such removal. At an October hearing she warned, “I will start contempt proceedings” if those orders were violated, ABC News reported.

That makes the paperwork the story. The legal defense fund argued in a filing that the administration may have broken the judge’s directive, AP reported. The government answered late Sunday with sealed documents, so the public cannot yet see whether officials say they gave the required notice, or when. If a notice was filed five or more days before Sunday, the planned flight may have been lawful on its own terms. If not, the scrubbed departure could be the government pulling back before a violation was complete. An allegation of noncompliance is not a finding of contempt.

The route matters too. Sending Iranians through Pakistan, with Iran’s diplomats taking them the rest of the way, mirrors the third-country path the government planned for detained Afghans before a New York judge paused those removals. According to Rahnama, a senior official of the Iranian Interests Section, the office in Pakistan’s embassy in Washington that handles Iran’s consular affairs, visited the detainees and told them Iran would carry them from Pakistan home. That detail lands squarely on the lawsuit’s central claim, which DHS denies, that U.S. agencies shared confidential asylum information with Iranian officials. Court filings unsealed last week showed the administration kept talking with Tehran about removals during the war.

Who is on these flights, and what they can still do

Removals to Iran are historically rare. AP has reported that more than 100 Iranians were returned on three flights between September 2025 and January 2026, arranged through a channel between ICE and Iranian officials. The legal defense fund said Sunday’s flight would have been the first since the war began. Not everyone aboard was resisting: Rahnama said at least one person had volunteered to go home after nearly two years in detention, and AP said it was unclear how many others had.

For Iranians with final removal orders, the practical tools are familiar ones. A motion to reopen based on changed conditions in the home country is exempt from the usual 90-day deadline and one-motion limit when the person is seeking asylum, and a war is the kind of change that motion was written for. A motion to reopen does not stop a removal by itself, so a stay request has to go with it. The five-day notice is the window in which those filings can be made.

The next moves belong to the judge. She can unseal the government’s filing, order an explanation of the timeline, or take up the plaintiffs’ broader request to halt Iranian removals while the information-sharing claims are tested. Until then, the notice requirement is the only thing between a final order and a flight. The episode joins other fights over removals to dangerous or unfamiliar destinations and lawmakers’ calls for assurances before such flights leave.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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