A pair of gay asylum seekers is fighting to stay in the U.S., even as the presidential administration has ordered their deportation to Iran, where they could face the death penalty for a previous conviction for homosexual activity.

The men’s attorney, Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council, noted in an interview with AZ Mirror that homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran.

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“So, there is a very, very real — not speculative — concern,” Wolf said.

As The Advocate reports, Wolf’s clients are romantic partners who were arrested by Iran’s Islamic religious police force in 2021. They were later convicted of “homosexual activity,” but were released while awaiting sentencing. They managed to flee the country and eventually entered the U.S., seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border in January 2025.

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Wolf described the couple’s cases as “textbook” asylum claims: “People from a country where who they are is criminalized and punishable by torture or death — that is literally the definition of an asylum seeker,” she told Advocate.

But the men have remained in detention since entering the U.S. Wolf explained that they did not have legal representation at their hearings in late April and early May, which she described as “fraught with bias” and violations of due process. Their claims were denied, and while Wolf has worked to appeal the decisions, the couple has been scheduled for deportation to Iran three times, though they have not yet been removed from the U.S.

Wolf told MSNow that her clients have not yet had “full hearings of their asylum claims in any meaningful way.” She described them as “terrified,” and said one of the men “calls every 45 minutes begging me to save his life.”

Most recently, the men were scheduled to be aboard a flight out of Arizona’s Mesa Gateway Airport, which on Sunday transported around 40 Iranian nationals — including other asylum seekers — back to their home country. On Friday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado issued a stay of removal for one of the men.

Wolf explained on Saturday that ICE exercises sole discretion over these deportations. “At the end of the day, ICE can just decide to take him off the flight,” she said of her second client. “If the courts don’t order them to, our hope is that they will be persuaded not to put my other client on that plane.”

On Monday, LGBTQ Nation reached out to the American Immigration Council, which confirmed that while the flight did leave the U.S. on Sunday, neither of Wolf’s clients were on board.

As Advocate notes, cases like Wolf’s and that of gay Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero highlight how the legal pathway to asylum has broken down under the current administration. Cases like her clients’, Wolf told the outlet, are “incredibly straightforward.” But, she said, “our immigration courts, when there aren’t other eyes — attorneys or otherwise — can be really fraught with bias.”

The administration, Wolf explained, has exploited the existing system and procedural barriers to make asylum effectively unattainable for many immigrants.

“You can make it so unbearable and so impossible to access that, for all intents and purposes, it no longer exists,” Wolf said.

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