The Trump administration is preparing to deport dozens of Afghan immigrants and asylum seekers to Pakistan on the first such flight of its kind, a senior administration official told NBC News — a move critics say could put their lives at risk.
The proposed deportation flight, which has not been publicly announced, could take place as early as Monday, according to rights advocates and families of detainees.
Among those facing deportation are relatives of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military in its 20-year war against the Taliban, which is now back in power. The deportees could face severe repercussions should Pakistan return them to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as is widely expected.
Afghans driven from their country by war and political instability have been welcomed by the U.S. for decades, including tens of thousands who fled the country following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in 2021. President Donald Trump halted admissions for Afghans and other refugees when he returned to office last year as part of a broader immigration crackdown.
His administration has deported thousands of people to countries that are not their own, many of them in Africa, in what immigration lawyers say is an effort to skirt international laws against returning asylum seekers to the countries they fled from. The legality of these so-called third-country deportation agreements is set to be debated by the Supreme Court in December.
It is not clear what kind of formal agreement the U.S. may have with Pakistan, but the senior administration official said the U.S. charter flight would not be able to land there without the Pakistan government’s knowledge and approval. The deportation plan was earlier reported by Bloomberg and The New York Times.
Bloomberg cited a federal government official familiar with the plans as a source for its report, while The New York Times cited three U.S. officials.
Shawn VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based advocacy group AfghanEvac, said it had confirmed that in recent days at least 80 Afghans have been moved to Louisiana from 34 other ICE facilities around the country, 19 of them without legal representation.
He said it was possible that there were hundreds of Afghans at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, which has served as a hub for ICE detainees before their deportation from the U.S.
If the U.S. sends Afghan detainees to Pakistan, they are not likely to be there long. Pakistan, which has hosted millions of Afghan refugees for decades, launched a sweeping crackdown in 2023, pressuring hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave the country and forcibly deporting others.
They are arriving to an Afghanistan battered by multiple humanitarian crises, including widespread malnutrition, as well as an ongoing military conflict with neighboring Pakistan and a dramatic rollback of women’s rights under the Taliban’s hard-line Islamic policies.
VanDiver said the Trump administration would most likely be aware that Afghans sent to Pakistan would be at high risk of being returned to Afghanistan.
“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,” he said.
Regardless of whether they worked with the U.S. military, VanDiver said, any Afghans flown from the U.S. would be viewed with suspicion by the Taliban and at risk of persecution, imprisonment or worse.
That does not appear to be a major concern for the White House, said the senior administration official, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
“The administration’s position is, ‘These individuals do not have status in our country, therefore we don’t really care what happens to them,’” the official said.
VanDiver and others say the Trump administration’s treatment of Afghan allies could also have long-term consequences for U.S. national security by discouraging people in other countries from working with U.S. forces in future conflicts.
Asked whether the Trump administration was concerned about that, the official said, “I don’t think they care.”
The White House referred a request for comment to the Department of Homeland Security, whose spokesperson said the agency could not confirm removal operations “for operational security reasons.” ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
A State Department spokesperson said the agency had “no plans to announce.”
“We reaffirm our position that all countries must be able to manage their borders and immigration processes in a manner that ensures the safety, security and prosperity of their citizens,” the spokesperson said.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
The senior administration official said the Afghans on the flight could include people with deportation orders, people who were turned down for asylum and people whose temporary protected status was terminated by the Trump administration. Many of the Afghans facing deportation requested asylum after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico, VanDiver said, and some of their cases are still pending.
Charlotte, a U.S. citizen whose Afghan husband has been in ICE detention since early 2025, said he had been moved to the Louisiana facility from Pennsylvania this month and told he would be deported in early November. She declined to be identified by her full name out of concern that her husband could be targeted by the Taliban.
Charlotte said she and her husband, whose asylum case has been pending for nine years, were visiting family in Maryland last year when he accidentally crossed into West Virginia and was pulled over. Though he was carrying his valid Illinois driver’s license, he did not have his work permit with him.
“When he was pulled over,” she said, “the sheriff actually said, ‘I’m an ICE agent. You’re going to immigration custody. I don’t care if the charges are dismissed, or I don’t care if you have a five-year work permit or Social Security card. I don’t care if you’re legal. Trump’s administration just took over — you’re going directly to immigration custody.’”
Charlotte sold their home in Illinois and moved to Maryland with their son, now 6, in order to be able to visit her husband at the ICE facility where he was held in Pennsylvania, about 100 miles away.
“I lost my nice house, our car, we left everything behind,” she said.
Over the next 20 months, when she took her son to see his father at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, they were always separated by plexiglass.
“They never let him hug him one time,” Charlotte said. “We just sat there and cried every time.”
But at least they knew where he was and that he was OK, she said. Now that he’s in Louisiana, she said, “we can’t even visit or even say goodbye, he’s over 1,200 miles away.”
With her husband potentially being sent to Pakistan or Afghanistan — a country he hasn’t been to since 2016 — the uncertainty is even greater; Charlotte said he is growing his beard to comply with the Taliban’s strict rules for men’s facial hair.
“I’m just terrified that he’s not going to be safe,” she said, “or he’s going to be held in the jail and there’s nothing I can do.”
Charlotte said she believed her husband had been targeted for deportation because of a past conviction for a nonviolent crime that has since been resolved.
“I still don’t think this should end our entire life, for a child not to see his dad,” she said.
“He’s completely devastated and traumatized,” she said of their son. “He wants to fight. He wants to go protest. He wants to speak to Donald Trump. He basically knows so much more than he should.”
The preparations for the deportation flight come nearly a year after a shooting in Washington that killed one National Guard member and seriously injured another. The suspect, an Afghan national who served alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan and was evacuated to the U.S. in 2021, had been granted asylum by the Trump administration. Immigration restrictions were tightened after the shooting.
VanDiver said the Trump administration may also be using the Pakistan flight as a test case for Camp As Sayliyah, a U.S.-run camp in Qatar where more than 1,000 Afghans who had been slated for resettlement in the U.S. have been stranded since Trump returned to office last year.
Asked about VanDiver’s claim, the White House referred a request for comment to the Department of Homeland Security, whose spokesperson again said the agency could not confirm removal operations “for operational security reasons.”
According to AfghanEvac,the camp was housing 287 men as of July, 319 women and 433 children. Most of them have been approved for U.S. resettlement after extensive vetting, and many of the adults worked alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The group at Camp As Sayliyah also includes 150 relatives of U.S. military service members, AfghanEvac said.
The State Department said earlier this year that everyone would be removed from the camp by March 31, a deadline that was later extended to Sept. 30. In September, the Trump administration delayed its closure by another nine months, The Associated Press reported.
Earlier this year, the administration considered sending the Afghans at Camp As Sayliyah to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is experiencing the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history.
In a statement on Friday, AfghanEvac accused the Trump administration of planning the Afghan deportation flight as the country is distracted by next week’s midterm election, “hoping no one is watching.”
“The government won’t say where these flights land, because it knows what happens to the people on them when they do,” the group said. “A government confident in what it is doing does not hide it.”
NBC News Top Stories wp:paragraph
هلدینگ کاسپین استانبول | خرید ملک در ترکیه | صرافی معتبر ایرانی در ترکیه | خرید و فروش طلا در ترکیه | مهاجرت به ترکیه | واردات و صادرات در ترکیه | نیازمندیهای ترکیه | اخبار ترکیه | اخبار جهانی | توریست ایران | خدمات توریستی در ایران | تورهای گردشگری ایران | هلدینگ اول | خدمات کاریابی و فریلنسری و شغل | مرجع اطلاعات ایران (همه چیز در ایران) | کیف پول و خدمات مالی و پرداخت یار | اخبار ایران | تابلو زنده قیمت ارز در ترکیه و استانبول | صرافی آنلاین ترکیه | قیمت طلا و نقره در ترکیه | سرمایه گذاری در ترکیه | جواهرات در ترکیه | نرخ لحظه ای ارزها در استانبول | قیمت دلار امروز در ترکیه | قیمت دلار استانبول امروز | قیمت لحظه ای دلار | اخبار روز ترکیه استانبول | اپلیکیشن ISTEX | اپلیکیشن قیمت لحظه ای دلار و یورو و لیر و ارزها در ترکیه
About the Author
