US begins deporting hundreds of Iranians after rare deal with Tehran

By Andrew Mills and Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) -The first group of about 400 Iranians expected to be deported from the U.S. under President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown were due to land in Qatar on Tuesday before flying to Tehran, a U.S. and an Iranian official said.

The group included both convicted criminals and people who had entered the country illegally, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  

The transfer marks an unusual moment of coordination between two nations at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear programme, which Tehran says is purely civilian but Washington asserts is aimed at building a nuclear bomb. 

The Iranian official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, played down the idea of any political deal with the U.S., which joined Israeli air strikes on Iran and its nuclear facilities in June. The matter was consular, not political, the official said. 

CALL TO RESPECT IRANIANS' RIGHTS

The Iranian foreign ministry's director general for parliament affairs, Hossein Noushabadi, said the U.S. was "planning to deport around 400 Iranians, most of whom entered the country illegally, in line with the new anti-immigrant approach of the U.S. government."

"In the first step, they decided to deport 120 Iranians who entered the U.S. illegally, most of whom through Mexico," he told the semi-official Tasnim news agency. 

Noushabadi called on Washington to respect the rights of Iranian migrants in the United States.

The first group of 120 would reach Iran in the next one or two days, he said. 

A U.S.-chartered flight took off from Louisiana on Monday and was scheduled to arrive in Qatar late on Tuesday so the deportees could be transferred to a Tehran-bound flight, the U.S. official said.

The White House and the U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.  

TRUMP'S DEPORTATION PLANS

Some of the Iranians had volunteered to leave after being in detention centers for months, and some had not, according to The New York Times, which first reported the deportations. 

"Some (returnees) had residence permits but due to reasons stated by the U.S. immigration office they were included in the list. Of course, their own consent was obtained for their return," said Noushabadi.       

Trump plans to deport a record number of people living in the U.S. without legal status, after what he describes as high illegal border crossings under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

However, his administration has struggled to increase deportation levels, even as it has created new avenues to send migrants to countries other than their own.

The U.S. in February deported 119 people from different countries, including Iran, to Panama as part of an agreement between the two countries.

(Reporting by Andrew Mills and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Anusha Shah in Bengaluru and Dubai Newsroom; Writing by Andrew Mills; Editing by Ros Russell, Aidan Lewis)