Sixty-six US lawmakers sent a letter Monday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding the administration halt planned deportations of Afghans, some of whom served alongside US and coalition forces before the 2021 withdrawal. Human Rights First confirmed a flight from Alexandria, Louisiana to Pakistan was scheduled for Tuesday, carrying some of the at least 150 Afghans slated for removal. The mechanism here is third-country deportation — a workaround the Trump administration uses when it cannot legally return people to their home countries due to torture or persecution risks. The US has struck agreements with at least 35 countries to accept third-country nationals, and has forcibly sent at least 25,000 people through this pipeline, according to tallies by Refugees International and Human Rights First. Pakistan, the receiving country for this batch, has deported millions of Afghans to Afghanistan in recent years as its relations with the Taliban have deteriorated. The deportation chain is clear: US to Pakistan, Pakistan to Afghanistan, Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Most of those scheduled for deportation never had meaningful access to legal counsel. Shawn VanDiver of AfghanEvac said many were placed into removal proceedings simply because they lacked attorneys. He described speaking to a former Afghan police officer who expected deportation and feared for his life. Others had worked directly with the US government or Afghan security forces — precisely the people the Taliban targets. The broader context is a systematic dismantling of Afghan resettlement infrastructure. Trump halted processing of Afghan applications after an Afghan national allegedly shot two National Guardsmen in Washington, DC in November 2025. A blanket visa ban followed. More than 120,000 Afghans were evacuated in 2021, initially granted humanitarian parole, then Temporary Protected Status under Biden. But with a severely backlogged immigration system, few have secured permanent status in five years. They remain in legal limbo — unable to advance asylum claims, unable to obtain green cards, unable to plan. The administration has simultaneously set record-low asylum quotas globally while carving out an exception for white South African Afrikaners, whom Trump said faced racial discrimination. The contrast is not subtle: a racial preference embedded in an ostensibly universal immigration crackdown. Bipartisan legislation to grant Afghans Temporary Protected Status exists but has not advanced. Over 1,000 Afghans who assisted US forces remain housed at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, granted a nine-month extension through September. The facility represents the physical manifestation of an unfulfilled promise — people extracted from their country in America's name, parked in a holding pattern with no resolution. Advocates continue pushing for legislative protection, but the political window is narrow and shrinking. The structural question is whether a country can rely on local partners in future conflicts if the precedent is abandonment. Every intelligence officer, military planner, and diplomat who works with foreign nationals operates on the implicit promise that cooperation will not be rewarded with deportation to the entity those nationals helped fight. That promise is now visibly breaking.
