Five years ago, they risked their lives to support American troops in Afghanistan. Now, refugees across the U.S. are facing the threat of certain death thanks to ICE.
Some 100,000 Afghans resettled in America, repayment for assisting the U.S. government during a fruitless 20-year war, after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Thousands of them have since found a new home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. But in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard members last month, which was allegedly carried out by one such Afghan refugee, the federal government has placed a dangerous new target on the community.
In the weeks since the shooting, ICE has combed the Dallas-Forth Worth area. Locals say that the agency has been harassing employers and demanding that they turn over employee schedules in an attempt to capture the refugees. Several refugees have already been detained throughout the country, sparking fear among community members that they could be plucked out of their homes and sent back to Afghanistan at any given moment.
“They’re literally going to be sending these people to certain death,” Zeeshan Hafeez, the community outreach director for DFW Refugee Outreach, a local refugee assistance nonprofit, told me. “The Taliban has kept track of them, and they’re going to wait and watch and see who comes back, and they’re going to be sent to certain doom if we allow them to get deported.”
Many of the refugees who came to America worked with the CIA in what were known as Zero Units. The units’ work involved killing or capturing high-profile targets in night raids, and assisting U.S. forces with translation services. In doing so, many Afghans willingly risked their lives. But that risk has not gone away since the Taliban took over and the war ostensibly ended: Any Afghan who worked with U.S. forces knows that returning home would be a death sentence.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the 29-year-old charged with shooting two National Guard members the day before Thanksgiving, had participated in the Zero Units. The ensuing attention on the controversial CIA program—and, by proxy, the Afghan refugee committee—shifted the Trump administration’s attention in a cataclysmic way, according to community advocates and local leaders in Dallas-Fort Worth.
The day of the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem took aim at Operation Allies Welcome, the program that facilitated the refugees’ arrival in the U.S., blaming it for admitting “unvetted” immigrants into the country. (Never mind that Lakanwal was granted his refugee status under the current Trump administration.)
Earlier this month, in a brief appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee, Noem offered a dangerous new lens on the embraced allies, lamenting that the program had potentially let in “up to 100,000 people” that she claimed “may be here to do us harm.”
Noem’s words were not empty threats made for the sake of posturing in front of a congressional committee. With ICE putting Dallas-Fort Worth under a microscope, refugees are holing up in their homes. They are avoiding work, food drives, and necessary medications out of fear of running into ICE. People who had once banked on having their families join them from Afghanistan are now warning their relatives not to come to America, despite Afghanistan being under Taliban rule.
“They’re literally intimidating workers and their work places and their managers to let go of these folks, and a lot of them are losing their jobs,” said Hafeez, who is also a Democratic candidate for Texas’s 33rd congressional district. “People that have been here for many years are losing their status.”
For a long time, because of the above-board deal with the government, members of the Afghan refugee community did not fear the threat of deportation. When Donald Trump turned his gaze toward the Latino community, Afghans did not feel the burn. But all of that has changed since the shooting.
The newfound anxiety has stunned people into silence, regardless of their immigration status. Local leaders were shocked last week when not one refugee showed up at a town hall intended to elevate the issue.
“Our Afghan neighbors are people who served shoulder to shoulder with our troops,” Hafeez told a sparse room. “They have earned their place in our society many times over.”
Aziz K. Budri, a retired executive, moved from Afghanistan to the U.S. more than 50 years ago. He has provided extensive aid to resettle the refugees, helping them land jobs, sign leases, furnish their homes, and generally acclimate to American life. He emphasized that when he first arrived in the U.S. in the late 1960s, he was “treated like a celebrity,” a fact of life that remained true for decades no matter where he lived in the country, from Iowa to Texas.
“American people are really the best people,” Budri said. “I cannot say the same thing, unfortunately, about the government.”
Refugees in the Dallas-Forth Worth area “are afraid,” according to Budri, who regularly fields calls from members of the community. For many of them, the message is loud and clear: The Trump administration will not honor decades of U.S. foreign policy, even with regard to some of its most self-sacrificing allies.
“I really hope the American government does not forget that these people sacrificed their lives, put their lives in danger to help American soldiers, and in some cases even saved their lives,” Budri said.
