When you can't go home again

Termination notices for some Afghans could be death warrants

Thousands of Afghans who fled their homeland following a disastrous 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan now face termination by the Trump administration of their legal status in the United States. They include a number of Christian converts who were part of underground churches and escaped Taliban threats.

At least 47 Afghans now part of U.S. churches in several states are confirmed to have received the U.S, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) notices terminating their status on April 11. The notices gave them one week to leave the country. That meant deportations could begin last week.

The 47 Afghan Christians had crossed U.S. borders legally and passed vetting requirements. Many received work permits and have jobs. They applied for asylum with hearings scheduled by the CBP, steps that are in line with the provisions for humanitarian parole under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Among them are family groups, single women and single men, children including one with special needs, a Bible translator and his wife. All faced dangers and struggled to get out of Afghanistan, most having to transit through Pakistan and even Brazil to reach the United States.

One, his name withheld for security reasons, was arrested by the Taliban before he could depart. He reports being tortured for three months and asked to give names of other Afghan Christians. He escaped to Iran before making his way to Brazil, then to Mexico and the U.S. border. He applied and received humanitarian parole on the basis of credible fears about returning to his homeland.

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Earlier this month, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that Afghanistan “no longer continues to meet the statutory requirements” for protected status—which include ongoing armed conflict, natural disasters, “or other extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent nationals from returning safely.

Noem revoked temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghans effective May 20, and at the same time Border Protection issued the 7-day termination notices. The action could affect 9,000 Afghans who are legally in the United States and in particular 1,200 Afghan Christians who “will face immediate threat of torture or death” if forced to return to Afghanistan. That’s according to an April 16 appeal sent to President Trump by a coalition of U.S. groups that helped evacuate and resettle the Afghans.

The Enduring Hope Alliance has asked for a 90-day pause on the terminations to create a system for exempting those in imminent danger should they be sent back. CEO André Mann said he doesn’t think the administration understood the implications of its recent decisions. “I don’t think they knew they were targeting these vulnerable Afghans,” he said.

Many groups like Enduring Alliance spent millions of dollars in private funds to assist in airlifts of endangered Afghans and to help them resettle, an ongoing effort in many cases.

A further 6,000 SIV applicants and active U.S. visa holders remain in Afghanistan, or in Pakistan, Qatar and Albania—countries where they were given safe harbor and could transit via U.S. military aircraft or State Department-approved evacuation flights. These include active-duty U.S. military personnel and family members. All are stranded by the administration’s halt to processing existing cases earlier this year, even those who had been approved to fly to the United States.

The chaotic dismantling of legal pathways for Afghans mirrors the chaotic response by the Biden administration when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. The U.S. embassy closure and evacuation of consular staff left stranded tens of thousands of Afghans with ties to the U.S. and snarled visa applications.

Groups like Enduring Alliance spent months and months afterwards supporting Afghans living in safe houses, finding and funding private flights or overland escorts for them out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The State Department had few options but TPS and humanitarian parole to permit their entry to begin asylum claims. Congress repeatedly introduced but failed to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, which could grant qualifying at-risk Afghans permanent status.

Photo by Sohaib Ghyasi

Now, the DHS determination that Afghanistan is safe to return to baffles experts. It leaves almost any recently exiled Afghan in jeopardy, or for that matter, anyone else here on temporary protected status because of turmoil in their home country.

“I believe that’s a foreign policy issue, not an immigration issue,” said Mann.

The State Department ranks the Taliban “an Entity of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act for “ egregious, ongoing and systematic” persecution of its religious minorities. It has a well-documented track record of imprisoning, torturing, and executing religious minorities, including Christians, Baha’is, Sikhs, Salafi Muslims, and others.

“I don’t know how DHS determined it’s safe,” said Nina Shea, senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute. “It contradicts the State Department’s finding that Afghanistan is one of the world’s worst persecutors. The Taliban works to eradicate Christianity and bans churches. Christians have been known to be hunted out and killed at times.”

Shea, who served as vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said: “I am hearing that certain immigrant classes of Iranian Christians are also being ordered to self deport within a week. They face similar threats in their home country.”

Besides the Enduring Hope Alliance, Christian leaders like Franklin Graham have publicly spoken on behalf of Afghan Christians.

World Relief vice president of advocacy and policy Matthew Soerens said, “Many of these Afghans were welcomed by the American people, including evangelicals. Deporting them now is both unjust and dangerous.”

None of the known cases have been deported so far, but administration officials aren’t indicating they’ll reverse the policy.

Related—

• Mass deportation campaigns leave millions of immigrants with agonizing choices, reports the Miami Herald—to leave the United States voluntarily, or risk detention—

  “The government made me believe I was legal. Now the government is reversing it to make me illegal,” said Harold Renard, a 55-year-old Haitian man who fled Haiti after gang members took over his farmland in 2022.

• The administration is asking Congress for $45 billion over two years to drastically expand immigrant detention—a six-fold increase in annual detention spending. Such funding would massively expand the scale of deportations too.

• Showdowns with the courts continue.

• To understand global migration, you have to see it first.

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