The Trump administration is deporting a planeload of about 100 Iranians back to Iran from the US after a deal between the two governments, according to two senior Iranian officials involved in the negotiations and a US official with knowledge of the plans.

Iranian officials said that the plane, a US-chartered flight, took off from Louisiana on Monday night and was scheduled to arrive in Iran by way of Qatar on Tuesday. The US official confirmed that plans for the flight were in the final stages. All the officials spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss details publicly.

The identities of the Iranians on the plane and their reasons for trying to immigrate to the US were not immediately clear.

The deportation is one of the starkest efforts yet by the Trump administration to deport migrants no matter the human rights conditions in countries on the receiving end. The expanding deportation campaign has sparked lawsuits by immigrant advocates, who have criticised the flights.

For decades, the US had given shelter to Iranians fleeing their homeland, which has one of the harshest human rights records in the world. Iran persecutes women's rights activists, political dissidents, journalists, lawyers, religious minorities and members of the LGBTQ community, among others.

In the past several years, there has been an increase in Iranian migrants arriving at the southern US border and crossing illegally, including many who have claimed fear of persecution back home for their political and religious beliefs.

Hossein Noushabadi, the director-general of parliamentary affairs in Iran's foreign ministry, said on Tuesday that US immigration authorities planned to deport 400 Iranians living in the US back to Iran over the coming months.

"In the first phase, they decided to deport 120 Iranians who entered the US illegally, mostly through Mexico," he told Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards force.

Some who will be deported held US residency, he said, adding that all of those being deported left Iran legally.

The two Iranian officials who spoke to The Times said the deportees included men and women, some of them couples. Some had volunteered to leave after being in detention centres for months, and some had not, they said.

The officials said that in nearly every case, asylum requests had been denied or the people had not yet appeared before a judge for an asylum hearing.

New York Times News Service