WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — Dozens of Afghans held in the United States who feared being deported to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan within days are feeling what advocates call “fragile relief”, after the Trump administration appeared to put plans to remove them on hold.
A flight that was to carry the group out of the US on election day earlier this month never left, after a federal judge temporarily blocked its departure to Afghanistan or neighbouring Pakistan. Advocates say the group numbers more than 150 people.
When that court order expired last weekend, lawyers feared the detainees could be put on a plane during the week of November 16, the rescheduled removal date given to at least one Afghan man held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Late on Tuesday, that man and a handful of others on the original flight list were found to no longer have a departure date. Some lawyers said their clients had been moved from staging facilities to long-term detention centres, suggesting they would not be flown out in the coming days.
“That isn’t immigration policy. It’s whiplash inflicted on people who already survived a war,” said Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of the #AfghanEvac coalition. “These men and women kept their promise to America, and it’s time we kept ours by ending these removals for good.”
Fears for those sent back
Some in the group have relatives who helped US forces during the war in Afghanistan, VanDiver said. Others on the flight list include women, at least one gay man, and members of the Hazara minority, some of whom say they have been beaten by the Taliban before. The Taliban have also ordered Hazara families from their homes in Kabul this month.
The US group Human Rights First has warned of “grave, systematic dangers” for Afghans returned to Afghanistan, including arbitrary detention, executions, and public flogging, as well as curbs on the freedoms of women and girls. Sari Arvey, its director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights, said the targeting of Afghans was part of a wider push to make arrangements with other governments to send people back to war zones and to countries with which the US has no diplomatic relations. Washington suspended relations with Afghanistan after the Taliban took power in 2021.
More than 60 members of Congress have written to the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department calling for any deportation flights of Afghans or Iranians to their home countries to be cancelled.
The Department of Homeland Security said it complies with all lawful court orders, and that ICE does not comment on or confirm planned removals, for operational security reasons and for the safety of its officers.
Push for protected status
#AfghanEvac is pressing the next Congress, which Democrats will control from January after this month’s midterm elections, to pass a bipartisan bill that would give Afghans already in the US temporary protected status (TPS) until July 2029, with vetting. The Supreme Court in June allowed the administration to end such protections, including for Afghans.
The administration has also stepped up deportations to “third countries”, a practice the Supreme Court allowed to continue in an emergency ruling in late September while the litigation goes on.
