Afghans in California reeling amid Trump administration travel ban, end of deportation protections

Los Angeles Times

5 days ago

Afghans who relocated to California have been reeling over the past few months and weeks as the Trump administration has moved to end deportation protections amid increasing efforts to further restrict Afghan nationals from coming to the U.S.
This week, despite efforts by an organization suing to maintain the protections, the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Afghans, which the U.S. granted in May 2022 after it withdrew military forces from Afghanistan. The status allowed Afghans to come to the U.S. and obtain work authorization, but it did not provide a pathway to citizenship.
'People are desperate,' said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of AfghanEvac, a nonprofit that supports the safe relocation of Afghan allies. 'They've followed all the rules. They've done everything the U.S. asked them to do, and at every corner, the Trump administration has been blocking them.'
The Trump administration in January suspended Afghan refugee programs and canceled scheduled flights for Afghans cleared by the government. In May, the State Department sent layoff notices to staff at the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, known as CARE, the agency tasked with working to ensure Afghans got settled into the U.S. with government support. And in June, Trump instituted a travel ban, suspending travel for Afghan nationals to the U.S. and leaving families who had been hoping to reunify stuck in limbo.
Afghans have increasingly gotten caught up in the Trump administration's efforts to ramp up deportations. In San Diego, an Afghan national who worked as a translator for the U.S. military and had been granted humanitarian parole was detained after attending an asylum hearing at immigration court.
The Department of Homeland Security announced in May that it would terminate Temporary Protected Status for Afghans. Secretary Kristi Noem said conditions in Afghanistan 'do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation.'
In a press release, the department said: 'The Secretary determined that, overall, there are notable improvements in the security and economic situation such that requiring the return of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan does not pose a threat to their personal safety due to ongoing-armed conflict or extraordinary and temporary conditions.'
Many organizations that help relocate Afghans criticized the move, saying conditions in Afghanistan, now under the Taliban, are not safe for those who fled, especially for those who assisted the U.S. military during the war. Casa, a national advocacy organization, filed a lawsuit against DHS, challenging the end of TPS for Afghans, as well as for Cameroonians, as unlawful.
On Monday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion by Casa to postpone the agency's actions. The case remains ongoing in U.S. District Court in Maryland.
In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said individuals who arrived on TPS can still apply for asylum and other protections. She said the end of TPS 'furthers the national interest and the statutory provision that TPS is in fact designed to be temporary.'
TPS has been a crucial stopgap for Afghans who made it to the U.S. but whose applications for asylum, or for the Special Immigrant Visas granted to Afghans who have worked with the U.S. government, are still pending, caught in major backlogs.
Halema Wali, a co-director at Afghans for a Better Tomorrow, a nonprofit that advocates for Afghan refugees in the New York City metropolitan area and has supported families entering the U.S. from Tijuana, said that nearly all of the organization's 800 members are on TPS.
'They are petrified,' Wali said. 'They are not sure how to approach this, and quite honestly, we are scrambling to figure out how we make them safe when the only thing protecting them from deportation is gone.'
Global Refuge, an organization that has resettled thousands of Afghans, said that as many as 11,700 Afghans in the U.S. are now vulnerable to deportation, and those who do not have other means to gain legal status or pending applications could lose work authorization.
'Ending TPS does not align with the reality of circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan,' Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, chief executive of Global Refuge, said in a statement. 'Conditions remain dire, especially for allies who supported the U.S. mission, as well as women, girls, religious minorities, and ethnic groups targeted by the Taliban. The anxiety among our Afghan clients is real and growing.'
Vignarajah called on Congress to establish a pathway to citizenship for Afghans.
California has become home to many Afghan refugees — as many as 58,600 call the state home, more than any other state, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The Greater Sacramento area hosts some 20,000 Afghan refugees, one of the largest communities in the U.S.
The city of Fremont, which has a neighborhood known as 'Little Kabul' for its array of Afghan shops and restaurants, raised nearly half a million dollars for its Afghan Refugee Help Fund, launched in 2021, to help newly arrived Afghans.
Harris Mojadedi, an Afghan American advocate in the Fremont area, said there is deep uncertainty amid shifting immigration policies. Afghans in the community have started receiving self-deportation notices from DHS, and many are struggling to figure out what comes next.
He knows of one Afghan couple, where one spouse has TPS and the other is a U.S. citizen, who are living each day as if it is their last together. Many Afghans are scared to speak out, he said, for fear of government retribution. People have become afraid of dropping their children off at school or calling the police if they are victims of crime, he said.
'Just like we're seeing with other communities, there's a lot of fear in the [Afghan] community,' Mojadedi said, referencing the immigration raids that have largely affected the Latino community.
Shala Gafary, an attorney who leads a team focused on legal assistance for Afghans at asylum advocacy nonprofit Human Rights First, said they are still seeing the aftermath of the U.S.' chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where thousands of Afghans were separated. She has helped families file applications to be relocated to the U.S. and reunite with their families under a program facilitated by the Biden administration.
But as soon as Trump entered office, he issued an order suspending U.S. refugee programs and canceled flights scheduled to bring some 1,660 Afghans cleared by the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel.
Gafary and other immigration attorneys are fielding calls every day from families asking what they can do. And she doesn't have an answer for them. She has had to instruct other attorneys — who ask what they should say to their clients — that all they can do is tell Afghan families the truth, that there are no options available.
'Since January, it's been nothing but bad news for the Afghan population,' Gafary said.
Back in Afghanistan, thousands living under Taliban rule worry for their futures. Their options for making a life elsewhere have shrunk exponentially, as neighboring nations Pakistan and Iran have begun deporting Afghan refugees en masse, and Trump placed Afghanistan on the U.S. travel ban list earlier this year.
For Afghan Americans in California who had eagerly anticipated the arrival of relatives who sought asylum in the U.S., Trump's immigration crackdown has been crushing.
One Southern California resident, a 26-year-old Afghan American woman, told The Times that seven of her family members, including her grandmother and several cousins, are now in limbo after having their visas approved but no confirmation that the U.S. will allow them in. They were scheduled to arrive in March from Afghanistan but were not allowed in.
The woman, who requested anonymity because she fears repercussions from the Trump administration for her family members still hoping to seek asylum in the U.S., said her family still hopes policy will shift and they will be let in because they have no other option.
She said young girls in her family haven't been able to go to school, and another cousin who had been working for an international aid organization is not allowed to work anymore.
'Everyone is holding their breath to see what happens next,' she said. 'The best thing we can do is just hope for the best, do what we can and check in on each other and keep our heads held up high.'