Photo: US Army, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. File photo of Kabul evacuation operations in August 2021, not a photo of the deportation flight.
Court documents obtained by The Associated Press have confirmed that the Trump administration is moving ahead with deporting Afghans detained in the United States back to their home country through Pakistan, with a scheduled flight from Louisiana to Pakistan on Tuesday carrying Afghan immigrants. The documents turn a plan first reported in the press on Friday into a confirmed operation, days before the first flights are due to leave.
The administration intends to deport Afghan immigrants as early as Monday on flights from Louisiana, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detention and processing facilities, to Pakistan, according to the court documents. The plan to send Afghans to Pakistan was first reported by Bloomberg, and The New York Times reported on Friday that the immigrants would then be sent onward to Afghanistan, where the Taliban government is in power.
What the court filings show
In a document filed in federal court in Virginia on Friday, a senior ICE official acknowledged that an Afghan immigrant had been scheduled to be on an upcoming charter flight from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Pakistan, "with further transport onward to Afghanistan." The document was filed in the case of an immigrant who is not in custody and is challenging efforts to deport him.
In a separate federal court case in Oklahoma, prosecutors filed a document on Monday disclosing that another Afghan immigrant was scheduled to be deported to Afghanistan sometime next week. The United States cannot arrange deportations directly to Afghanistan because it has no formal diplomatic relations with the Taliban government, which is why the route runs through Pakistan.
Human Rights First, an advocacy group that tracks US deportation flights, said on Saturday that it had confirmed a scheduled flight from Louisiana to Pakistan on Tuesday carrying Afghan immigrants. "It is beyond egregious that this administration plans to carry out an unprecedented mass deportation flight of Afghans, forcibly sending them through Pakistan and into the hands of the Taliban," Savitri Arvey, the group's director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights, said in an email to the AP.
Advocates and Democrats condemn the plan
Immigrant rights organisations say those deported could face retaliation from the Taliban. Thousands fled persecution after helping the US military and aid groups in Afghanistan, and many of those now facing removal are relatives of Afghans who assisted American forces before the fall of Kabul in 2021.
"This is absolutely unconscionable," said Shawn VanDiver, a US Navy veteran and president of the advocacy group #AfghanEvac. "It seems like there's no end to their willingness to break the law and violate people's human rights."
Democratic members of Congress also criticised the plan after the Times report on Friday. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire wrote that it was "reprehensible" to deport Afghans, including women, children and those who supported US forces, to Pakistan, where they risk being sent back into the hands of the Taliban. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said the administration was "betraying that promise" made to Afghan allies, deporting them "to potential torture and death."
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in an email to the AP on Saturday that ICE does not comment on future immigrant-removal operations, citing operational security and personnel safety. Officials at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Why this case is different
The Trump administration has deported thousands of immigrants to countries other than their own, in some cases because it cannot send them directly to their home countries, and in other cases as a deterrent. In many cases, a US immigration judge has determined that their lives would be in jeopardy if they were sent home. It was not immediately clear whether any of those designated for return to Afghanistan have protective orders against being sent there.
The move is part of a broader immigration crackdown. On entering his second term, President Donald Trump paused his predecessor's Afghan resettlement programme, leaving thousands of people who had gone through years of vetting stranded at sites around the world, including a camp in Qatar housing more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America's war effort or are relatives of US service members. That camp, Camp As Sayliyah, was given a last-minute nine-month reprieve in September after it had been due to close.
For the Afghans now in detention in Louisiana, the question is no longer whether the administration intends to send them back, but how quickly the courts, Congress or public pressure can intervene before Tuesday's flight. The court documents confirm the plan is real and imminent; what happens next will determine whether the people on that flight reach Pakistan, and then Afghanistan, or whether a judge steps in first.
Sources: Associated Press (via ETV Bharat); The New York Times (as reported by Dawn and The Japan Times); Human Rights First, via the Associated Press.