U.S. Plans to Deport Nearly 200 Afghans Through Pakistan Into Taliban Hands

The Trump administration has made plans to deport nearly 200 Afghan nationals by first flying them to Pakistan, where officials would then return them to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a U.S. official told CBS News. The official cautioned that the plans are still in flux and that it is 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 set off alarm among advocates, who warn it could send people into danger. Many Afghans who came to the United States in recent years have ties, directly or through relatives, to the American war effort, and could face persecution from the Taliban.

A sworn court declaration confirms part of the plan. Sergio Aguilar, a supervisory detention and deportation officer at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote on Oct. 30 that a planned deportation flight scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3, would land in Pakistan before an Afghan national would be transported onward to Afghanistan by land. Aguilar said he had initially understood the charter would land in Afghanistan but later learned its destination was Pakistan. "The alien's intended removal destination was Afghanistan, as reflected in his removal order," he wrote.

The declaration was filed in Sadat v. Mullin, a federal case in Virginia involving Said Mansor Sadat, a 30-year-old Afghan national assigned to a special charter flight departing from Alexandria, Louisiana. U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff had ordered federal officials to explain whether the plane would fly directly to Afghanistan or stop in Pakistan.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Sadat and another Afghan facing deportation, said both clients were told independently they would be flown to Pakistan on Tuesday and then moved overland to the Afghan border. "They were not told who would be taking them overland and in what manner," he said in an email to CBS News on Monday.

Sadat has since been taken off the flight list and released from ICE custody, his attorney said, after a judge ruled his continued detention violated his due process rights. The second client was still waiting on Monday night for a decision on an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order.

The disclosures raise basic questions about whether Pakistani authorities have agreed to receive the deportees and which government would ultimately oversee their transport into Afghanistan. The United States suspended operations at its Kabul embassy in 2021 and has no official diplomatic relations with the Taliban government, which complicates any effort to deport people directly.

Most Afghans who arrived in the U.S. in recent years came after the 2021 fall of Kabul, either through a Biden-era resettlement effort or on their own, with some first traveling to Latin America and crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to address the planned flights, citing operational security. A DHS spokesperson defended the broader practice of third-country removals. "Illegal aliens being sent to a third country receive notice and assurances prior to their removal," the spokesperson said, adding that ICE receives diplomatic assurances from destination countries that deportees will be safe.