WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The Trump administration is preparing to deport more than 150 Afghan immigrants to Afghanistan via Pakistan as early as Monday, in what would be the first large-scale U.S. deportation flight of Afghans back into Taliban hands.
The detainees, held in Louisiana, include family members of Afghans who worked alongside U.S. military forces and aid organizations, as well as at least one man who could face persecution under Taliban rule, according to U.S. officials and advocacy groups.
Because Washington has no diplomatic relations with the Taliban, the administration has arranged for Pakistan to receive the deportees and expel them across the border—a workaround that bypasses legal protections some Afghans had obtained from U.S. judges. 
Human Rights First President Uzra Zeya warned that by creating arrangements with countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, and now Pakistan, the U.S. administration is “effectuating removals to active war zones and severe security crises where individuals may be at grave risk”.
The flight marks a stark reversal of the promise made to Afghan allies during America’s longest invasion. 
More than 15,000 vetted Afghans who received Chief of Mission approval remain stranded abroad, unable to travel, while nearly 6,000 Special Immigrant Visas sit unused after the administration suspended refugee admissions and Afghan immigration processing. 
In Qatar, roughly 1,100 former Afghan interpreters and their families remain trapped on a defunct U.S. military base, now facing a reported proposal to resettle them in the conflict-riven Democratic Republic of Congo—a plan 29 Democratic senators described as “one of the most cruel and imprudent betrayals in our Nation’s history”.
The broader architecture of this abandonment extends beyond Afghanistan. The administration’s refugee admissions ceiling stands at 17,500 for fiscal year 2026, with nearly all slots reserved for white South African Afrikaners—while only three refugees from Afghanistan were admitted through the first ten months of the year, compared to 100,034 refugees admitted in 2024 under the previous administration. 
Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan has been terminated, stripping deportation protection from approximately 12,000 people, and some Afghans who served alongside American forces have been detained at routine immigration appointments or seized in their neighborhoods.
For critics, the pattern is unmistakable: a nation that invaded Afghanistan, relied on local allies for two decades, withdrew in chaos, and has now turned its back on those who kept their side of the bargain. 
The message to future partners is equally clear—American promises carry an expiration date, and the allies who believed them are left to face the consequences alone, whether in Taliban-held Afghanistan, in limbo camps in the Persian Gulf, or in the crosshairs of a deportation flight scheduled to depart within days.