A US deportation flight carrying Iranian detainees was forced to turn back on Tuesday after Pakistan reportedly refused to receive them, ABC News has reported, citing the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and sources familiar with the situation.
The detainees were scheduled to be flown to Pakistan before being transported onward to Iran. However, Pakistani authorities declined to accept them, according to two sources familiar with the situation who spoke to ABC News. The reason for Pakistan’s refusal remains unclear.
The charter plane, a small Talon private jet with a 17-person capacity, left Mesa, Arizona, shortly before 5am local time on Tuesday, 10 November, but turned around about 30 minutes later and landed back at the same Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staging site.
At least nine people were aboard the flight, according to a relative of a detainee. By Tuesday afternoon, the Iranian immigrants had been taken off the plane and returned to an immigration detention facility in Arizona.
The aborted flight marked the second failed attempt to deport the group. An earlier flight scheduled to depart from Mesa on Sunday was cancelled after the detainees had already boarded, with that operation reportedly routed through Georgia to Pakistan.
A spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the rebuffed flight. When asked last Friday about deportations to Afghanistan via Pakistan, the spokesperson, Sajjad Haider Khan, said the arrangement was “under consideration”.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the passengers on Tuesday’s flight had criminal records and final orders of removal, and claimed histories of arrests and convictions in cases involving assault, drug trafficking, child abuse, domestic violence and unlawful firearm possession.
The Trump administration is planning at least two operations this month to deport immigrants to countries with which the United States has no diplomatic relations — Afghanistan and Iran — using Pakistan as the point of transfer, according to The New York Times.
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Iranian detainees, accusing ICE of sharing confidential asylum information with Iranian authorities. The fund said the detainees had been told by an Iranian government official over the weekend that they were going to be put on a flight to Pakistan with onward transfer to Iran.
The United States carried out three deportation flights to Iran between September 2025 and January 2026, removing more than 100 Iranians, the Associated Press has reported. For now, the return of Tuesday’s aircraft leaves the latest deportation attempt unresolved, with the detainees back in detention in Arizona.
