Eighty Afghans, at least, have been shuffled into a single ICE facility in Central Louisiana from 34 others around the country. Nineteen of them had no lawyer with them when they went. Shawn VanDiver, a U.S. Navy veteran who runs the San Diego advocacy group AfghanEvac, says his group confirmed the transfers, and that the real number at the site could run to hundreds.
The reason, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press, is a deportation flight that could leave as early as Monday, November 2, from Alexandria, Louisiana, bound for Pakistan “with further transport onward to Afghanistan.” Nobody has announced it.
A workaround with an obvious endpoint
The mechanics are worth a look. Washington has no formal relations with the Taliban government, so it cannot simply fly people to Kabul. Instead it sends them to a third country and lets that country finish the job. The administration has already used the approach to deport thousands of people to places that are not their own, South Sudan and the Central African Republic among them. Immigration lawyers say the aim is to sidestep the rules against returning asylum-seekers to the countries they fled.
A senior administration official told NBC News that a U.S. charter could not land in Pakistan without Islamabad’s knowledge and approval. What kind of formal agreement exists, if any, is unclear. The official also described the White House position this way: “These individuals do not have status in our country, therefore we don’t really care what happens to them.”
Three U.S. officials told The New York Times that the removal is, in effect, to Afghanistan, and that detainees have been told as much.
Pakistan is not a safe stop
As ever, the detail that matters is what Pakistan does next. It began a sweeping crackdown in 2023 and has since expelled or forced out more than 2.7 million Afghans. It has said it will remove the roughly 1.5 million still there, whatever their status. Anyone landing from the U.S. is unlikely to stay long.
VanDiver puts it bluntly: “You don’t have to be that smart to figure out that they’re sending them to Pakistan so that Pakistan will finish the job.” Any Afghan flown out of America, he says, would be viewed with suspicion by the Taliban, worker for the U.S. military or not.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the resettlement group Global Refuge, called Pakistan “patently unsafe for Afghans.” She added that sending people into that crackdown is “a deliberate decision to put them in harm’s way.” Her group says the flight could carry more than 150 people.
Who is on the manifest
Among those facing removal are relatives of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military during its 20-year war against the Taliban. The Times reports that at least one gay man is also on the list. The United Nations has documented killings, arbitrary detention and torture of people tied to the former government and its security forces. The Taliban has also barred women and girls from secondary school, universities and most work.
Afghans are covered by the principle of non-refoulement and by the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which bar sending a person to a place where they risk torture or persecution. Critics say a hop through Pakistan does not change that. The Supreme Court is due to hear arguments on the legality of third-country deportation agreements in December.
The paper trail is thin. A senior ICE official acknowledged in a filing in federal court in Virginia that an Afghan immigrant was scheduled for a charter from Alexandria to Pakistan. That case involves a man who is not in custody and is fighting his own deportation. In Oklahoma, federal prosecutors disclosed in a separate case that another Afghan was due to be deported to Afghanistan sometime next week. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the AP that ICE does not discuss future removals, citing operational security and personnel safety. Pakistan’s embassy in Washington had not replied.
A wider squeeze
The flight fits a pattern. Trump halted admissions of Afghans and other refugees when he returned to office in 2025. His administration has imposed a travel ban that bars most Afghans from entering, ended Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan and frozen processing at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, leaving thousands in limbo.
VanDiver called the plan “absolutely unconscionable.” Vignarajah invoked the images of 2021: “Five years ago, Americans watched Afghans cling to planes to escape the Taliban. On Monday, our government plans to charter one back to their persecutors’ hands.” AfghanEvac, for its part, accuses the administration of timing the flight while the country is looking at the midterm elections.
Sources
- Afghan refugees
- Trump administration set to deport Afghan refugees to Pakistan, despite risk they’ll be returned to Taliban
- Global Refuge Disturbed by Plan to Deport Afghans to the Taliban by Way of Pakistan
- US plans deportation of Afghan refugees to Pakistan – Daily Times
- Trump Plan to Deport Afghan Immigrants, Refugees Condemned as 'Sickening' | Common Dreams
- U.S. plans to deport Afghans back to their home country through Pakistan, documents show
Photo: Alejandro (CC0)
