BBC:

Leyla Khodabakhshi

One Monday in mid-October, after a year in US immigration detention, officers arrived unannounced at Majid's cell in Texas.

They told him simply to "pack up" - that he was being moved - even though an immigration judge had already granted him protection from removal five months ago. Shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, he was driven through the night to a military airfield in Louisiana.
Majid - not his real name - had fled Iran for the US in October 2024, after repeated detentions and alleged torture, first because of his involvement in the Mahsa Amini protests, and later because of his conversion to Christianity.

When US officials forced him to board a plane carrying more than 150 deportees heading to Managua, Nicaragua, he remembers being the only non–Latin American on the plane. Hours later, the flight landed and officials handcuffed him, denied his request for asylum and directed him onto an itinerary routing him through Venezuela and Turkey toward Iran - a journey he understood as a forced return.

Majid later was able to go into hiding in Istanbul, terrified of what awaited him back in Iran. He is one of several Iranian Christian converts who spoke to the BBC - most anonymously out of fear for relatives back home - whose asylum claims have been rejected in the past year. Their accounts point to inconsistencies in how US authorities assess the risks facing Iranian returnees and how sensitive religious information in asylum files is handled.

Their experiences also run contrast to other elements of US foreign policy, as President Trump publicly laments the plight of Christian persecutions abroad, threatening to send troops into Nigeria "guns a-blazing" if its government "continues to allow the killing of Christians".

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