From Allies to Targets
A new immigration crackdown is sweeping up Afghans who were promised safety in exchange for service
From the Editor:
Today is the last day to read the Oct 23 edition of The Preamble –– tomorrow, we’ll debut an all-new issue about AI. It includes all new ways to think about this technology that is, ready or not, revolutionizing the world at a speed we’ve never seen before.
Our immigration articles will move to the archive tomorrow, but before that happens, here’s a story you might have missed: our contributor Rebecca Gibian examines what happens when Afghan immigrants who were promised resettlement in the US find instead that they are targets for ICE.
See you tomorrow morning.
With facts and gratitude,
– Sharon McMahon, Editor-in-Chief
Nearly 200,000 Afghans found refuge in the US after the chaotic 2021 American withdrawal from their country. Now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents are hunting them down.
Zia S., a former US military translator and Afghan national, expected a routine visit when he arrived at the US Customs and Immigration Services office in East Hartford, CT, this July for his green card appointment. He submitted his biometric information, including fingerprints and a photo, and headed back to the parking lot.
Moments later, six ICE agents surrounded him. Some wore masks covering most of their face. They forced him into an unmarked van, refused to answer questions, and sped away, leaving a helper who had accompanied Zia standing there, stunned.
Zia’s detention represents a troubling shift: under the Trump administration, ICE agents are targeting the thousands of Afghans who were offered legal pathways to enter America and have since made new homes in the US. Now, many of those protections have been stripped away. President Donald Trump says his immigration policies affect the “worst of the worst” and “dangerous” criminals.
But this time, it is America’s allies who are caught in the crosshairs.
A harrowing journey
To understand what’s happening, we need to backtrack a few years to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The first Trump administration pledged the full withdrawal of US troops by May 1, 2021. President Joe Biden pushed the deadline to September 11, 2021
But the Taliban began an offensive, quickly gaining territory and seizing Kabul on August 15, causing the Afghan government to fall. In the ensuing chaos, the US scrambled.
Over 17 frantic days, the US evacuated over 122,000 people, including US citizens, citizens of US allies, Afghan civilians, and Afghans who were employed by the US government and military during the war. In total, about 76,000 Afghans were evacuated to the US during the withdrawal. A total of 200,000 (including that evacuation group) have made their way to the US since the war ended.
The Afghans who entered the US were offered various forms of protection from deportation:
Temporary Protected Status or TPS, which provides protection from deportation to nationals of countries the US deems unsafe. It also provides work authorization.
A smaller number of Afghans came through the southern US border using the CBP app that granted them parole or asylum.
Special Immigrant Visas are the most permanent option given to those who worked alongside the US during the war. In return for their service, SIV recipients and eligible family members receive a green card upon arrival in the US.
Humanitarian Parole, offered through a program called Operation Allies Welcome (later changed to Operating Enduring Welcome). This gave Afghans two years of protection and work authorization while they applied for another pathway to citizenship, like an SIV.
On their way to the US, Afghan evacuees to the US were thoroughly vetted. They were first flown to US military bases, including those in Germany and Qatar, for paperwork, fingerprinting, background checks, and medical screenings.
Once in the US, the Afghans rebuilt their lives — enrolling children in school, finding jobs, and joining communities. In 2022, the International Rescue Committee reported that Afghan parolees could “contribute up to $200 million in taxes and $1.4 billion in earnings in their first year of employment alone.”
“So many people supported the US government because they truly believed in our country,” Kimberly Grano, a staff attorney for the International Refugee Assistance Project, told The Preamble. “And so many individuals that I’ve talked to really want to contribute to America, and they want to start a life here.”
But now, everything has changed.
A new normal
On his first day in office, President Trump signed various executive orders that impacted migration policies and refugee applications. His administration suspended the admission of nearly all refugees, including those eligible for family reunification programs — which left Afghan families separated in different countries, with no end in sight. (Previously, if an SIV recipient came to the US alone, certain family members, including a spouse and unmarried children under 21, could follow later. Separately, someone granted refugee or asylum status could also petition for their family to join them. This was called “follow to join.” That too is no longer allowed.)
Trump then enacted a travel ban for people from Afghanistan, citing the fact that the Taliban is a terrorist organization (SIV recipients are exempt from the travel ban). The administration also paused foreign aid. All this impacted the Afghan community by shuttering support programs for SIV holders and suspending refugee resettlement to the US. For months, due to lack of funding from the US government, there were very few resettlement agencies available to help any SIV recipient who managed to get into the US once they arrived. Some agencies cobbled together non-governmental funds during that time, but others shuttered completely. In June, that funding was restarted, but future policy changes could once again affect the agencies running resettlement.
Shawn VanDiver, founder and President of #AfghanEvac, a group that has worked directly with the government to help get Afghans to safety, told The Preamble, “The Biden administration was moving 5,000 Afghans a month to the United States. Since January, there have been about 200 SIVs a month that have been processed and come here. But that’s it, they shut it all down.”
The administration didn’t just stop the flow of Afghan immigrants coming to the US. In the spring, it announced it was also terminating temporary protected status for Afghans already in the US, starting mid-July, putting as many as 9,000 Afghans at risk of deportation. It’s not clear how many Afghans have been deported since these changes but there have been reports of asylum-seeking Afghans being sent to countries that have agreed to receive migrants deported from the US, including Panama and Costa Rica.
Others, like Zia S., have been detained and now face deportation. The Washington Post recently reported on a man called H. (who used only his initials out of fear of the Taliban), who is being held in a detention center and believes he will be tortured and killed if deported to Afghanistan. This week, Reason reported on the arrest of Ihsanullah Garay, an asylum seeker with brain cancer who is now being held “in ICE custody pending the outcome of his removal proceedings.”
“This administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said. “We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan… and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation. Afghanistan has had an improved security situation and its stabilizing economy no longer prevents them from returning to their home country.” She also said that “reviewing TPS designations is a key part of restoring integrity in our immigration system.”
This decision struck many as inconsistent. “The Taliban is recognized as a terrorist organization,” Daniel Salazar, a refugee and protection policy adviser at Global Refuge, a nonprofit that helps refugees and immigrants, told The Preamble. “So we view [it] as a bit of a contradiction, with TPS [saying] Afghanistan is safe for returns, but then the very next month in the travel ban, talk about how Afghanistan is a terrorist-run country.”
The State Department website currently warns US citizens against traveling to Afghanistan, due to “civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.” “Multiple terrorist groups are active in Afghanistan,” it says, “and U.S. citizens are targets of kidnapping and hostage-taking. The Taliban have harassed and detained aid and humanitarian workers. The activities of foreigners may be viewed with suspicion, and reasons for detention may be unclear.”
This leaves tens of thousands of Afghans in a confusing legal limbo. There are workarounds, but they require money and good lawyers, two things not everyone has access to. The bottom line, said Grano, is that “anyone whose status is being put in jeopardy by this administration’s actions faces a risk of deportation.”
The change in policy also threatens relationships between the US military and future wartime allies. VanDiver, a veteran himself, said, “Servicemembers cannot effectively do our jobs if we don’t have help from people who know the landscape, who have built-in intel networks, who understand that something might be off here, they have the context of their entire lives to help us accomplish our mission. It’s already asking a lot for them to do that, and sure they get paid, but the promises that we make when people do that is that, we know that this might go south and and you might need a country to call home, so in exchange for your services, we’re going to let you become an American.”
He continued, “Now, I don’t know how anybody could ever take that promise to the bank.”
Sending a message
Afghans abided by immigration law to escape a crisis the US government helped create. Now the government has created a new situation: they are at risk of being sent back to a potentially deadly situation and an oppressive and discriminatory regime that is known to target allies of the US.
“The US government intervened in Afghanistan over the course of decades and relied so heavily on Afghans there, and that has directly put people at risk if they’re to be returned to Afghanistan,” said Grano. “This is an instance of the US completely turning its back on people it made a promise to, making people even more vulnerable than they were before.”
VanDiver said, “We’re getting reports of Afghans being detained [by ICE] all the time.”
Zia S.’s case illustrates the precarious situation. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, he and his family fled for fear of their lives. They entered on a two-year humanitarian parole in October 2024, and the State Department deemed him eligible for an SIV. Zia was in the process of finishing that application when he was detained. Last week, he was released on a $15,000 bond. When he walked back into his home, his wife burst into tears and his children jumped on him out of relief.
The reasons for his detention are not apparent, though the New Haven Independent reported that the FBI received information in May that Zia posed a “national security concern.” The court filings did not contain more information. Zia’s lawyer adamantly disagrees, saying her “client has no criminal history, and he has never posed a security threat to the US public or to anyone else.”
How long he will be allowed to stay is unclear — as is the future of thousands of other Afghans who call the US home. The country that welcomed them is now kicking them out.
I don’t want to hear one more thing in my entire life about “Biden’s failed Afghan pullout” from anyone who voted for this monster. The cruelty was evident before he took office the first time with his so called Muslim ban now it’s on full display. These people deserve our help after what we did in their country.
This administration is heartless. Fix the immigration process, not just deport everyone.