FIRST ON FOX: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deported three Iranian nationals known or suspected of terrorism Sunday. 

Homeland Security said the three nationals — Ehsan Khaledi, Mohammad Mehrani and Morteza Nasirikakolaki — were former members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

They were among 14 Iranians on board a deportation flight Sunday, the first to head back to Tehran, Iran, since sweeping anti-government protests triggered a deadly government crackdown.

Both Mehrani and Khaledi entered the U.S. illegally in Southern California in 2024, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Nasirikakolaki entered illegally in November 2024, when he was encountered by Border Patrol near San Luis, Arizona, the agency said. 

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The White House insisted that anyone deported had “Executable Final Orders, meaning a federal judge has ordered their removal from the United States.”

Since the start of the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested 1,400 known or suspected terrorists, the Department of Homeland Security said, and 7,400 gang members. 

The Iranian deportation flight drew attention due to reports of human rights abuses associated with the protests. Two unlawful migrants scheduled to be on the flight were gay men, and their lawyer, Bekah Wolf, had warned they stood “an extremely high chance” of being executed if they returned.

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But the men were moved into quarantine due to measles exposure and were not on the flight. 

Sunday’s deportation was the third flight returning Iranian nationals to their home country since September 2025. The previous two flights were believed to have at least 55 people on them. 

The IRGC is Iran’s elite military force, separate from the country’s regular army and reporting directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. U.S. officials have designated the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization, citing its long history of involvement in terrorist activity, support for extremist proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas and plots against U.S. personnel and interests worldwide. 

Through its Quds Force, the IRGC provides training, funding and weapons to militant groups and has been linked to assassination plots, attacks on U.S. forces and allies and other covert operations that Washington says threaten American national security and regional stability.

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Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have climbed sharply in recent weeks as President Donald Trump has publicly kept the option of military action on the table amid Iran’s deadly crackdown on nationwide protests, warning Tehran that the United States could respond if executions or mass killings continued.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency estimates that nearly 6,000 people have been killed since protests broke out at the start of 2026. Meanwhile, the U.S. is building up its U.S. naval and air force presence near Iran, including with the arrival of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to the region.