A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleged that the Trump administration had shared confidential information about Iranian asylum-seekers with Tehran, violating federal immigration regulations and endangering hundreds of people. In March 2025, the State Department started to hold meetings with Iranian officials to discuss detained Iranian immigrants, according to the complaint from the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and the Public Citizen Litigation Group.In those meetings, U.S. officials allegedly shared sensitive information about Iranian immigrants, including details from their asylum applications, in which immigrants reported whether they’d been persecuted for their religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or involvement in women’s rights activism. Immigration and Customs Enforcement then forced Iranian immigrants to meet with Iranian officials, who seemed to have comprehensive knowledge of their asylum applications, the complaint said. Those meetings have continued amid the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Federal regulation passed in the 1990s bars the U.S. government from revealing confidential information about asylum applications, credible fear determinations, and reasonable fear determinations. If confirmed by a court, the Trump administration has blatantly violated this rule in order to execute the president’s mass deportation agenda.Roughly 600 Iranian immigrants were detained by immigration enforcement last year. In September, Iranian officials agreed to take as many as 400 deported Iranian immigrants. That month, a flight returned dozens of immigrants to Iran. In nearly every case, either the immigrants’ asylum requests had been denied or they had not been provided a hearing. Two more flights took place in December and January. The last was a week before the war started.In addition to cracking down on undocumented immigrants, the Trump administration has made sweeping efforts to undermine legal immigration pathways. There have been mounting reports that asylum cases are being routinely dismissed by immigration judges and that asylum-seekers are then taken into ICE custody for expedited removal. The government has stacked the deck by appointing immigration judges bent on denying asylum claims, curbing America’s refugee program, and imposing steep price increases on H-1B visas.