Rep. Junie Joseph Condemns Deportations to Iran and Liberia

Press releases are provided to Yellow Scene Magazine. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Rep. Junie Joseph Condemns Deportations to Iran and Liberia, Calls for Human Rights to Remain at the Center of U.S. Immigration Policy 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 20, 2026

BOULDER, CO — State Representative Junie Joseph today condemned the Trump administration’s decision to deport people to Iran and to send individuals to Liberia under a new third-country deportation agreement, warning that the United States must not send people to countries where they could face serious threats to their safety, liberty, and human rights.

Newly released emails obtained by the National Iranian American Council and reported by the Associated Press show that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement coordinated with Iranian officials in the deportation of more than 100 Iranian nationals in late 2025 and early 2026. The reporting raises particularly serious concerns because some deportees were asylum-seekers or individuals who may have faced persecution if returned to Iran. The emails also indicate that Iranian officials had access to detainees and played a role in determining who would be placed on deportation flights.

Those concerns are heightened by the United Nations’ extensive documentation of human rights abuses in Iran. In 2026, UN experts have raised alarm over arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, mistreatment of detainees, and the use of the death penalty following proceedings that raise serious fair-trial concerns. UN experts have also documented allegations of torture being used to obtain forced confessions and warned about the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities.

The administration has also begun sending people to Liberia who are not Liberian nationals. On Thursday, the first 20 people arrived in Liberia under an agreement that could ultimately send up to 1,200 people there over the next year. The agreement includes people from Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean who are being removed from the United States to a country that is not their country of origin.

“The United States should never treat human beings like cargo that can simply be shipped to another country when their removal becomes politically convenient. Deporting people to countries where they may face persecution, torture, arbitrary detention or inhumane conditions is not a responsible immigration policy. It is a failure of our obligation to protect human dignity,” said Rep. Junie Joseph. “The United States has the resources and the responsibility to ensure that immigration enforcement is carried out lawfully and humanely. We cannot claim to stand for human rights around the world while sending vulnerable people into circumstances where those very rights may be threatened.”

The United Nations has also previously documented serious concerns about detention conditions in Liberia, including severe overcrowding, prolonged pretrial detention and inadequate conditions. A UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture found that overcrowding and detention conditions in Liberian prisons could constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and reported that pretrial detainees were sometimes held in the same facilities as sentenced prisoners. More recently, UN human rights mechanisms have continued to raise concerns in Liberia, including a 2026 communication regarding an alleged physical attack on a human rights defender.

“Immigration enforcement cannot come at the expense of basic human rights. Every person facing deportation deserves due process and protection from being sent into danger. That principle should not change based on someone’s nationality, immigration status, or political circumstances,” Joseph said. “As a country founded in part on the promise that people fleeing persecution could find safety here, we should be doing everything possible to uphold that promise, not abandoning it.”

Rep. Joseph called on the federal government to ensure that no person is deported to a country where they face a credible risk of persecution, torture, arbitrary detention, or other serious human rights violations, and to ensure that third-country deportations are subject to meaningful due process and humanitarian protections.

Media Contact:

Office of Representative Junie Joseph
303-866-2915
[email protected]
###