An Avelo Airlines jet that has been painted all white and is used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Air Operations at Mesa Gateway Airport for deportation and detainee transfers. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror

Two gay Iranian men who came to the United States seeking asylum and who were set to be deported on Sunday to Iran, where homosexuality has been punished by death, had their deportations delayed. 

While the two men were not deported on Sunday, an unknown number of other Iranians were, as immigration watchdogs and journalists noted that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement chartered aircraft that departed from Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport made its way to the country.  

Rebekah Wolf, an attorney for the American Immigration Council, which is representing the two men, confirmed to the Arizona Mirror that one of the men was able to obtain a temporary stay of removal from late Friday from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Wolf declined to publicly identify her clients out of fear for their safety, but the Mirror has reviewed court documents and detention records that confirm key details of their story. 

The other man, who is medically fragile, had his deportation delayed because he is under a medical quarantine due to a measles outbreak at the ICE Florence Detention Facility he is currently detained at, Wolf said. ICE, the Arizona Department of Health Services and the Pinal County Health Department all refused to comment on the outbreak. 

Wolf’s clients, who have no criminal convictions and who both came to the United States in 2025 on asylum claims, were arrested by the Iranian “morality police” for being gay years ago. That spurred them to flee the country. 

Homosexuality is a crime in Iran and the country has executed men for it as recently as 2022. 

“Our position has been that, if we can get a court, any court, any judge to fully consider all of the evidence in the case, that a grant of asylum is obvious,” Wolf said. “These are very straightforward cases.”

Wolf’s clients were denied asylum in spring 2025 and have been working on appealing that denial, but were not granted stays of removal. She said that when her clients initially went before the court, they did not have legal representation, leading to the court and judge not seeing all the evidence for their case. 

“The reason that we are in this position is because these clients, while they have very straightforward asylum claims, did not have representation,” Wolf said.

While the temporary stay will help her one client, it does not halt deportation for the entirety of the appeal process. 

Between 3,000 and 4,500 Iranians were recently killed when their government brutally cracked down on protesters. The unrest led to the Federal Aviation Administration issuing a no-fly zone over the region as tensions between Iran and the United States escalated. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about what agreement it had made to allow its deportation aircraft to fly into Iran and what agreement it may have come to with the country allowing it to conduct the deportation. 

Wolf also said that she has been in communication with members of Congress who have taken interest in the case, which has led to some interesting revelations. 

“Up until Sunday morning, the last we had heard was that there was not going to be a flight on Sunday,” Wolf said, of information she and members of Congress had been told. “The lack of communication or transparency between DHS and Congress is pretty telling about the sort of state of things.” 

U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, a Phoenix Democrat, has been outspoken about the deportations to Iran, asking the ICE and DHS to clarify what arrangements the United States has made to conduct the deportations back to Iran. 

The Mesa Gateway Airport that the two men are scheduled to fly out of plays a crucial role in ICE’s ramping up of aerial deportation efforts. It hosts the agency’s headquarters for its “ICE Air” operations, which uses subcontractors and subleases to disguise deportation aircraft.

The airport has also been part of the administration’s efforts to send immigrants to African nations like Ghana, often when those aboard are not even from the continent. 

The airport is also home to a lesser-known detention facility. 

The Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center, or AROCC for short, is a 25,000-square-foot facility at the airport. It opened in 2010 to little fanfare and can house up to 157 detainees and 79 employees from ICE, according to an ICE press release from 2010.