120 Iranians deported from US to arrive home this week

Iran said Tuesday that 120 nationals being deported from the United States under President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, will fly home this week.

"120 people should be deported and flown home over the next couple of days," foreign ministry consular affairs official Hossein Noushabadi told the Tasnim news agency.

"The U.S. immigration service has decided to deport around 400 Iranians currently in the United States, most of them after entering illegally."

The New York Times reported that some 100 Iranians who had sought refuge in the United States were being deported to their homeland under an agreement between Washington and Tehran.

It said the rare deal between the longtime foes was the fruit of several months of negotiations.

Contacted by AFP, the US State Department did not immediately comment.

The newspaper said an aircraft chartered by the U.S. authorities had left the southern state of Louisiana on Monday evening and was expected to land in Tehran later Tuesday after a stopover in the Gulf state of Qatar.

It said the deportations were "the most stark push yet by the Trump administration to deport migrants even to places with harsh human rights conditions".

Earlier this year, the United States already deported a number of Iranians, many of them Christians, to the Central American countries of Costa Rica and Panama.