Afghans who relocated to California have been reeling over the previous few months and weeks because the Trump administration has moved to finish deportation protections amid growing efforts to additional limit Afghan nationals from coming to the U.S.
This week, regardless of efforts by a company suing to keep up the protections, the Trump administration ended Non permanent Protected Standing for Afghans, which the U.S. granted in Could 2022 after it withdrew navy forces from Afghanistan. The standing allowed Afghans to return to the U.S. and procure work authorization, however it didn’t present a pathway to citizenship.
“People are desperate,” stated Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of AfghanEvac, a nonprofit that helps the protected 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 applications and canceled scheduled flights for Afghans cleared by the federal government. In Could, the State Division despatched layoff notices to employees on the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, often called CARE, the company tasked with working to make sure Afghans received settled into the U.S. with authorities assist. And in June, Trump instituted a journey ban, suspending journey for Afghan nationals to the U.S. and leaving households who had been hoping to reunify caught in limbo.
Afghans have more and more gotten caught up within the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations. In San Diego, an Afghan nationwide who labored as a translator for the U.S. navy and had been granted humanitarian parole was detained after attending an asylum listening to at immigration court docket.
The Division of Homeland Safety introduced in Could that it will terminate Non permanent Protected Standing for Afghans. Secretary Kristi Noem stated circumstances in Afghanistan “do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation.”
In a press launch, the division stated: “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 assist relocate Afghans criticized the transfer, saying circumstances in Afghanistan, now beneath the Taliban, aren’t protected for individuals who fled, particularly for individuals who assisted the U.S. navy throughout the battle. Casa, a nationwide advocacy group, filed a lawsuit towards DHS, difficult the tip of TPS for Afghans, in addition to for Cameroonians, as illegal.
President Trump boards Air Pressure One sure for Scotland on July 25, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Photographs)
On Monday, the 4th Circuit Court docket of Appeals denied a movement by Casa to postpone the company’s actions. The case stays ongoing in U.S. District Court docket in Maryland.
In a press release, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated people who arrived on TPS can nonetheless apply for asylum and different protections. She stated the tip of TPS “furthers the national interest and the statutory provision that TPS is in fact designed to be temporary.”
TPS has been a vital stopgap for Afghans who made it to the U.S. however whose purposes for asylum, or for the Particular Immigrant Visas granted to Afghans who’ve labored with the U.S. authorities, are nonetheless pending, caught in main backlogs.
Halema Wali, a co-director at Afghans for a Higher Tomorrow, a nonprofit that advocates for Afghan refugees within the New York Metropolis metropolitan space and has supported households getting into the U.S. from Tijuana, stated that just about the entire group’s 800 members are on TPS.
“They are petrified,” Wali stated. “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.”
International Refuge, a company that has resettled hundreds of Afghans, stated that as many as 11,700 Afghans within the U.S. are actually weak to deportation, and those that don’t have different means to achieve authorized standing or pending purposes might lose work authorization.
“Ending TPS does not align with the reality of circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, chief govt of International Refuge, stated in a press release. “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 known as on Congress to determine a pathway to citizenship for Afghans.
Demonstrators protest towards a sweeping new journey ban introduced by President Trump at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport on June 9, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon / AFP through Getty Photographs)
California has turn into residence to many Afghan refugees — as many as 58,600 name the state residence, greater than some other state, in accordance with the Migration Coverage Institute. The Higher Sacramento space hosts some 20,000 Afghan refugees, one of many largest communities within the U.S.
The town of Fremont, which has a neighborhood often called “Little Kabul” for its array of Afghan outlets and eating places, raised practically half one million {dollars} for its Afghan Refugee Assist Fund, launched in 2021, to assist newly arrived Afghans.
Harris Mojadedi, an Afghan American advocate within the Fremont space, stated there’s deep uncertainty amid shifting immigration insurance policies. Afghans in the neighborhood have began receiving self-deportation notices from DHS, and lots of are struggling to determine what comes subsequent.
He is aware of of 1 Afghan couple, the place one partner has TPS and the opposite is a U.S. citizen, who’re dwelling every day as whether it is their final collectively. Many Afghans are scared to talk out, he stated, for worry of presidency retribution. Individuals have turn into afraid of dropping their youngsters off in school or calling the police if they’re victims of crime, he stated.
“Just like we’re seeing with other communities, there’s a lot of fear in the [Afghan] community,” Mojadedi stated, referencing the immigration raids which have largely affected the Latino neighborhood.
Shala Gafary, an legal professional who leads a crew centered on authorized help for Afghans at asylum advocacy nonprofit Human Rights First, stated they’re nonetheless seeing the aftermath of the U.S.’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the place hundreds of Afghans have been separated. She has helped households file purposes to be relocated to the U.S. and reunite with their households beneath a program facilitated by the Biden administration.
However as quickly as Trump entered workplace, he issued an order suspending U.S. refugee applications and canceled flights scheduled to carry some 1,660 Afghans cleared by the U.S. authorities to resettle within the U.S., together with relations of active-duty U.S. navy personnel.
Gafary and different immigration attorneys are fielding calls daily from households asking what they will do. And she or he doesn’t have a solution for them. She has needed to instruct different attorneys — who ask what they need to say to their shoppers — that each one they will do is inform Afghan households the reality, that there are not any choices obtainable.
Again in Afghanistan, hundreds dwelling beneath Taliban rule fear for his or her futures. Their choices for making a life elsewhere have shrunk exponentially, as neighboring nations Pakistan and Iran have begun deporting Afghan refugees en masse, and Trump positioned Afghanistan on the U.S. journey ban record earlier this yr.
For Afghan People in California who had eagerly anticipated the arrival of family who sought asylum within the U.S., Trump’s immigration crackdown has been crushing.
One Southern California resident, a 26-year-old Afghan American girl, instructed The Instances that seven of her relations, together with her grandmother and a number of other cousins, are actually in limbo after having their visas accepted however no affirmation that the U.S. will permit them in. They have been scheduled to reach in March from Afghanistan however weren’t allowed in.
The girl, who requested anonymity as a result of she fears repercussions from the Trump administration for her relations nonetheless hoping to hunt asylum within the U.S., stated her household nonetheless hopes coverage will shift and they are going to be let in as a result of they don’t have any different possibility.
She stated younger ladies in her household haven’t been capable of go to high school, and one other cousin who had been working for a global support group isn’t allowed to work anymore.
“Everyone is holding their breath to see what happens next,” she stated. “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.”
