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Two gay Iranian men seeking asylum in the U.S. could face execution if they're deported to Iran, a move the Trump administration has not ruled out.

Two gay Iranian men seeking asylum in the United States over fear they could be executed in Iran are facing an uncertain future, with U.S. officials offering no clarity about whether they could be deported amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war with Iran if their asylum cases are unsuccessful.

Ali and Adel, who are using assumed names to protect their identities, entered the U.S. from Mexico in 2025, just before President Trump took office for his second term. They were facing charges at home over their sexuality, Rebekah Wolf, director of the Immigration Justice campaign at the American Immigration Council, told CBS News.

In Iran, "they were charged with a crime that is punishable by execution, by hanging, in fact," Wolf said. "In many cases, it is not so stark or obvious what an asylum seeker is facing. I think this is by far the clearest case of why our asylum system exists. They are facing execution by a regime that we believe should not be in power. That, we've demonstrated through our own actions … in United States foreign policy."

The couple initially fled from Iran to Turkey and "stayed there for a number of years" before traveling through South and then Central America to reach the U.S., Wolf told CBS News.

"Turkey is not particularly friendly to the LGBT community either, but also … they don't have laws that allow you to seek permanent asylum there," Wolf said. "The question of whether or not there were other places that they could have stayed, there's sort of two answers to that. One is that many of those countries themselves are not friendly to LGBTQ communities."

The other reason, she said, was that at least some of the countries they traversed "have policies about certain nationalities and they, you know, saw significantly higher barriers to being able to resettle in one of those countries" as Iranian nationals, she said.