Once hailed as heroes, Afghans fear deportation under Trump

Ali was 25 and a pilot for the Afghan air force, just like his father before him; he arrived at the special mission wing 777 airbase in Kabul around 11am one day in August 2021.

The moment he stepped through the gates, he sensed something was wrong.

Kabul, in his mind, was untouchable. “I didn’t think it would reach Kabul,” he said in an interview by phone from his apartment in Boise, Idaho, recently.

“It” referred to the resurgence of the Taliban. The Guardian is using a pseudonym for Ali’s safety and that of his family.

He said: “The US had its embassy there. There were so many Americans.”

But the scene at the base that morning looked nothing like the one he knew. Pilots sprinted between hangars, stuffing bags and shouting orders. Routines that once gave structure to their days had collapsed.

Ali ran toward the command center, adrenaline rising, he recalled, as he tried to understand what was unfolding.

For weeks, he had felt the political ground shifting. “Our American mentors had told us to stop bombing the Taliban,” he said. “That was unusual.” Apparently, airstrikes had ceased, so Ali was focusing on intelligence work.

On 15 August 2021, the truth finally landed. Kabul was falling. It was no longer a question of whether control of the capital of Afghanistan would change hands but how quickly.

“They told me I had two choices,” he recalled of his superiors. “Get on a US air force C-17 evacuating civilians, or fly my plane out of the country.”

Ali didn’t hesitate. He had been flying alongside American forces since he was 19, convinced Afghanistan could still become a place where his younger sister could grow up free. “I was fighting for democracy, and for my little sister’s future,” he recalled.

He thought briefly about calling his family, urging his mother and sisters to run to the airport. Then he registered the crowds flooding the runway, people climbing walls, screaming, begging and trying to cling to departing planes, scenes of chaos and desperation seen on television around the world.

“I had 15 minutes to decide if I was leaving my family behind,” he said. “I couldn’t bring them into that chaos.” He climbed into a type of Pilatus PC-12, adapted for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance work and special operations – the most advanced aircraft in the Afghan fleet – and flew it toward Uzbekistan, joining more than 400 Afghan air force fighters and support staff who fled the base that day.

“I wasn’t going to let that plane fall into Taliban hands,” he said. The aircraft, funded and built with American support, represented a staggering investment. “It’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. Leaving it behind would have armed the very people he had spent years fighting and risk seeing it used against the US in the future.

When asked whether he thought about his family or the fiancee he had planned to marry later that year, he paused. “I covered American troops for thousands of hours from the air. I believed they would cover me once,” he said. Like many Afghans who worked with US forces, he trusted that his allies would not abandon him. “I always believed they would protect my family,” he said, “as I had protected theirs.”

Ali now drives for Uber in Boise while putting himself through flight school. His family fled to a neighboring country, which he prefers not to identify publicly, after the fall of Kabul. But his fiancee remains in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

He sends money to his family, and to his fiancee, while covering his own living expenses and US aviation training.

“I’m a pilot, not an Uber driver,” he said. “I don’t want to brag, but I’m good at what I do.”

On 3 January 2025, Ali was granted asylum in the US. He was expecting to receive his green card next year, which would allow him to work legally as a commercial pilot and petition to bring his family to safety.

“I like to do things the right way, legally and properly,” he said. He hoped that once he had his green card, he could bring his fiancee to the United States and hold the engagement ceremony they had never had that August.

That future seemingly collapsed last month. On 26 November, while Ali was on shift, his phone rang. His family, calling from the country where they had taken refuge, told him an Afghan man had been apprehended in connection with the shooting of two national guard soldiers in Washington DC. Ali remembers the moment.

“My first reaction was, this is bad. It shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “It’s the last thing we wanted to see, especially now.”

Afghan communities across the United States quickly condemned the “criminal act”. The man accused of the shooting had been evacuated through Operation Allies Welcome, the same program that had brought tens of thousands of Afghans to the United States after the Taliban takeover.

Spencer Sullivan, a former US army captain who served in Afghanistan and is one of the authors of the upcoming book Not Our Problem, which traces the journey of a US soldier and his Afghan interpreter through an increasingly hostile political climate toward refugees in the west, said he had feared what would follow the shooting in DC.

“As soon as it happened, I thought: ‘I know exactly what’s going to happen,’” he said. “This guy is going to be used as a representation of tens of millions of Afghans … a perfect excuse for those [anti-immigration] people to have a national bullhorn.”

Sullivan was right. Within days, to the dismay of many, the Trump administration rolled out sweeping measures: pausing pending asylum cases, halting visa issuances to Afghans, reviewing green cards held by immigrants from the Middle East and Africa and reopening the cases of approvals granted under the Biden administration to further scrutinize them.

The changes froze immigration pathways for thousands of Afghans already living in the country.

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, also ordered the suspension of special immigrant visas, which were created for Afghans who risked their lives working alongside the US military and government. Overnight, people who believed they were protected no longer knew whether they would be allowed to stay in the US.

Earlier that year, the administration had sharply curtailed refugee admissions while advancing an exemption for white South African applicants. It expanded a travel ban affecting several Muslim-majority countries.

Jennifer Patota, deputy director of US legal services at the International Refugee Assistance Project, based in New York, said the tragedy “supercharged” an agenda already in motion. “Policies that punish an entire nationality because of one person’s actions are unjust and counterproductive,” she said.

Green card processing has been frozen, she said, and Afghans are being detained during routine immigration appointments.

“People are afraid they’ll be stopped by ICE,” she said, referring to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “We’ve seen Afghans called in and detained out of the blue.”

She views these moves not as isolated decisions, but as part of a broader strategy to narrow who gets to belong. “We’re watching an administration strip status from non-white, non-European immigrants,” she said. “It’s a signal about who is considered worthy of refuge in America.”

Ali’s worst fear has arrived. As rhetoric hardens and enforcement intensifies, he is convinced the country he once defended will now treat him as a threat. “They’re going to see everybody the same,” he said, of Afghans in the US. “They don’t know me, so they will see everybody in the same picture, and that’s bad.”

Shawn VanDiver, a navy veteran and founder of AfghanEvac, a non-profit organization that helps Afghan refugees, said Afghan families were terrified.

“The fear is real,” he said. “People are afraid to go to the store, to the park, to the mosque. ICE is showing up at those places. They fled the Taliban because the Taliban disappeared people off the street. That’s not supposed to happen in America.”

VanDiver rejects suggestions that both US political parties bear equal blame. He argues that Democrats failed to move quickly enough to pass legislation that would have provided a permanent visa pathway for Afghan parolees after the 2021 evacuation. “They were cautious,” he said, adding that they were worried about political backlash from Republicans and segments of the public over granting protections to Afghans, “and it cost them.”

But, he added: “What Republicans are doing now is something else entirely. This isn’t normal immigration policy. It’s fear, prejudice and political opportunism.”

On 9 December, a coalition of more than 130 organizations led by Refugee Council USA urged the Trump administration to reverse the policies that have halted or restricted refugee, asylum and visa processing.

John Slocum, who leads the coalition, warned that the consequences stretch beyond Afghan families in the US. “The United States is breaking the promise it made to wartime allies who risked their lives for the American mission,” he said. “Those decisions don’t just abandon Afghans. They tell the world the US government is no longer a reliable partner.”

Ali tries not to think about what might happen next, the worst-case scenario that he could be deported back to Afghanistan, which the US government claims is becoming safer, but where he fears his life would be in danger.

“It’s really hard,” he said. “I have to remind myself it’s all going to work out.” He fears he’s running out of time, something he cannot control. “I’ve always been the one who gets things done. I passed the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] flight exam in one shot. I was a pilot at 19. But I can’t change the Trump administration’s policy toward my family.” Then his voice tightened, and he said: “If it were up to Trump, he would deport everyone who looks like me. He doesn’t care about the US constitution.”

He worries most about his 13-year-old sister. “Her favorite thing right now is riding her bike, it fills her with joy,” he said. He worries that when she turns 16, that freedom, like many others, would be taken away in Afghanistan. “That makes me extremely sad,” he said.

When asked how he feels now about his service alongside American forces, he went quiet.

“America scammed me,” he said. “I gave years of my life. I flew over American troops, giving them protection and providing intelligence on the Taliban. And today, I feel scammed.” He also drew a distinction he refuses to let go of.

“Americans are some of the most loving people,” he said. “I believe in God, and everyone will have to answer to Him someday. The good Americans who helped refugees, who fought for our freedom and our rights – they’ll be rewarded.”

He paused, then added: “But I still have to live with what was promised, and what was taken.”