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The Trump administration has made plans to deport nearly 200 Afghan nationals by first sending them to Pakistan, where officials would then return the deportees to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a U.S. official told CBS News.
The official cautioned the plans are still in flux, and that it’s unclear when such deportations could take place.
The Afghans in question are in ICE custody, accused of violating U.S. immigration law.
The plan has triggered alarm among advocates for Afghans, who warn that the proposal could lead to the deportation of Afghans who could be persecuted by the Taliban because of the connections they or their relatives had to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.
The U.S. suspended operations at its Kabul embassy in 2021 and does not have official diplomatic relations with the current Taliban government, which would complicate any efforts to deport people directly to Afghanistan.
A U.S. immigration enforcement official confirmed in a sworn court declaration that a planned deportation flight originally scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3, would land in Pakistan before an Afghan national would be transported onward to Afghanistan via land.
Sergio Aguilar, a supervisory detention and deportation officer at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he initially understood that the charter would land in Afghanistan but subsequently learned that Pakistan would be its destination.
“The plane’s final destination would be Pakistan with further transport onward to Afghanistan,” Aguilar wrote in the Oct. 30 declaration, adding, “The alien’s intended removal destination was Afghanistan, as reflected in his removal order.”
The declaration was filed in Sadat v. Mullin, a federal case involving Said Mansor Sadat, a 30-year-old Afghan national assigned to a special charter flight scheduled to depart from Alexandria, Louisiana, after U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered federal officials to explain whether the planned charter would fly directly to Afghanistan or stop in Pakistan.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney representing Sadat and another Afghan national facing deportation, said both clients were told independently they would be flown to Pakistan on Tuesday before being transported overland to the Afghan border.
“They were not told who would be taking them overland and in what manner,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said in an email to CBS News on Monday.
Sadat has since been removed from the flight list and released from ICE custody, according to his attorney, after a judge ruled his continued detention violated his due process rights. His second client, however, was awaiting a decision on an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order as of Monday night.
The disclosures raise significant questions about whether Pakistani authorities have agreed to receive the deportees and which government would ultimately oversee their transportation to Afghanistan.
Most Afghans who arrived in the U.S. in recent years came after the 2021 fall of Kabul, either through a Biden administration-era resettlement effort or through their own means, with some even first traveling to Latin America and crossing via the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to address the planned removal flights, citing operational security concerns in a statement to CBS News, but defended its broader third-country removal practices.
“Illegal aliens being sent to a third country receive notice and assurances prior to their removal,” a DHS spokesperson said, adding that ICE receives diplomatic assurances from destination countries that deportees will be safe.
The department did not specify whether Pakistan had provided such assurances for this operation or whether any guarantees would extend to the deportees’ onward transportation and treatment in Afghanistan.
“When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them,” the spokesperson said.
The Pakistani embassy did not immediately respond to CBS News’ request for comment.
DHS referred questions about third-country agreements to the State Department. However, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio was pressed about the planned Afghan deportations during an Oct. 31 news conference, he directed the question back to DHS.
CBS News has reached out to the State Department, but did not receive a response.
Afghanistan’s Taliban-led Foreign Ministry aired its own concern Monday over reports that the United States intended to transfer Afghan nationals to Pakistan, calling for coordination and urging that the rights and dignity of Afghan citizens be respected.
“Third countries should not bargain over the transfer of another country’s nationals in pursuit of short-term, limited concessions or other considerations, nor should their decisions and actions undermine human dignity, rights, or established ethical and humanitarian standards,” a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Shawn VanDiver, a U.S. Navy veteran and president and founder of #AfghanEvac, a nonprofit focused on supporting Afghan allies who resettled in the U.S. following the U.S. military’s withdrawal from the country, said in a statement, “When even the Taliban are voicing ‘serious concern’ about this plan, the administration should stop and ask what it is doing.”
“Handing the families of our allies to Pakistan, a government that has no plan for them and every reason to send them to the Taliban, is not immigration enforcement,” he said. “It is abandonment with a boarding pass.”
As of Monday, 66 members of Congress in a letter called on Rubio and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to cancel deportation flights of Afghans and Iranians.
The planned removals of Afghans through Pakistan have also surfaced in separate federal court proceedings in Texas and Louisiana.
In an Oct. 15 order, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone said ICE had acknowledged that Basir Ahmad Ahmadi, an Afghan detainee in El Paso, had been “nominated for an Afghanistan removal mission tentatively scheduled for early November.”
Ahmadi then sought emergency relief, arguing that Pakistan could arrest him and turn him over to Taliban authorities. Cardone denied his request on Oct. 29, ruling that the district court lacked jurisdiction to halt his removal.
In Louisiana, another Afghan national, Khaled Khaleeq, sought emergency intervention after learning through news reports and conversations with other detainees that he might be deported to Pakistan or Afghanistan. A federal judge denied his request on Oct. 30, though subsequent reconsideration notices have been filed.