Defending what it characterized as standard intergovernmental data-sharing, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Tuesday that it routinely forwards the names and precise locations of Iranian asylum seekers to the regime they are fleeing to expedite background checks.
The administrative practice, detailed in a recent federal lawsuit, involves U.S. immigration officials transmitting unredacted dossiers of pro-democracy protesters, religious minorities, and LGBTQ applicants to Tehran to ensure the dissidents' accounts of being actively hunted by state security forces are factually accurate.
When an applicant claims they will be summarily executed upon return to their home country, it is simply best practice to email that country's interior ministry to ask if this is currently on their schedule.
According to sources close to the process, the Iranian government has been highly cooperative with the U.S. inquiries, frequently responding within minutes to confirm that the asylum seekers are indeed high-priority enemies of the state, while graciously offering to deploy heavily armed repatriation details to the applicants' temporary housing facilities in California.
Court filings indicate the information-sharing arrangement has been so successful at clearing administrative backlogs that the State Department is now exploring similar pilot programs, including a proposed initiative to cc the Kremlin on the precise GPS coordinates of defecting Russian journalists to verify their claims of being closely monitored.
In a Tuesday morning motion, federal attorneys asked a judge to dismiss the dissidents' lawsuit entirely, arguing that the U.S. government had already mitigated any potential danger by requiring Tehran to sign a non-binding pledge that the leaked home addresses would only be used for official, state-sanctioned disappearances.