More than 150 Afghan immigrants detained in the United States are expected to be deported to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, with the first chartered flight due to leave as soon as Monday. The plan, reported by Reuters on Friday, would be one of the largest single expulsions of Afghans since the Taliban seized power in 2021.
According to the New York Times, cited by Reuters, dozens of Afghans have been moved from detention facilities across the country to Louisiana in recent days. A US official confirmed to Reuters that the deportations would run via Pakistan, because Washington has no diplomatic ties with the Taliban and cannot arrange a direct return. Three US officials told the Times that the deportation is, in effect, to Afghanistan, and that detainees have been told the same.
Many of those facing removal fled Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover and the chaotic American withdrawal in August 2021. Shawn VanDiver, head of the advocacy group #AfghanEvac, said some are “brothers and sons of men who served alongside US forces, families the Taliban already has every reason to target.” He urged Congress to pass legislation granting Afghans in the United States temporary protected status.
The Department of Homeland Security would not confirm the operation, citing operational security. President Donald Trump has said his immigration crackdown and deportation drive aim to improve domestic security. Rights advocates counter that the crackdown violates due process and free speech protections and has created an unsafe environment for minorities.
The refugee resettlement organisation Global Refuge condemned the plan, warning that Pakistan offers no safe harbour. “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,” said its president and CEO, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah. Pakistan has expelled more than 2 million Afghan nationals to Afghanistan since 2023, according to Reuters, and Global Refuge notes the group would face onward expulsion across the border once in Pakistan.
The flight would mark an escalation of the administration’s third-country removals, which have already sent deportees to countries including South Sudan and the Central African Republic. The deportation drive has become one of the defining fights of Trump’s second term, drawing legal challenges and street protests alongside support from voters who backed his promise of stricter enforcement — a tension also visible in the recent row over the administration’s citizenship probe of a sitting member of Congress.
Why this matters goes beyond one flight. Afghans who worked with American forces, or whose relatives did, face a documented risk of Taliban reprisal, and a return routed through Pakistan — itself in the middle of a mass expulsion of Afghans — leaves them with no country in the chain where their safety is assured. If the flight goes ahead on Monday, it will test two things at once: whether the courts intervene before departure, and whether the United States keeps any practical meaning in the promise made in 2021 that those who helped it would not be abandoned to the people they fled.
