Afghans awaiting US resettlement say they’re being deported from Pakistan back to the Taliban

Afghans who were promised a home in the United States after their country fell to the Taliban say they have waited so long for the US to process their applications that they are now being sent back to the enemy they fled.

A number of Afghans who worked with the US and were told they were eligible for resettlement there have been forcibly deported back to Afghanistan from Pakistan, where they fled to await processing following the Taliban takeover in 2021, CNN can reveal.

One man waiting for a US visa described being dropped at the Afghan border by Pakistani police this summer. “They did not hand us over to the (Taliban) Afghan border forces,” he said. “They just released us on the border and told us to go back to Afghanistan. It was me, my four kids and my wife deported together.” He is now living in hiding in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Another deported Afghan, also speaking from hiding in Kabul, said: “So this is very, very dangerous, and it is very tough… How many people have been killed, had been tortured, have been disappeared?” The man, a former employee of a US contractor, said the Taliban “will punish me, they will put me in jail. Maybe they will kill me? I’m sure they will.” He added: “Still, we believe that the USA will help us. We believe we didn’t lose our hope still.”

Both individuals spoke to CNN anonymously for their safety, and provided documentation showing a US visa case number being processed, and evidence of their presence in Pakistan.
Many Afghans fled the Taliban after the August 15, 2021 fall of Kabul to the hard-line group. More than 124,000 Afghans were airlifted out of the country in a huge US-led operation.

Yet, thousands also fled across the border to Pakistan, often with incomplete paperwork, following US guidance that they should wait in a third country for their visa applications to the US to be processed.

Nearly 90,000 Afghans have since been resettled in the US, according to State Department figures, but many others have been caught in the backlog of so-called Afghan Priority 2 (P-2) or Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) applications waiting to be processed.

Human rights groups say the most acute situation is faced by those in Pakistan, from where hundreds of Afghans have been deported in a crackdown against migrants following recent political instability.

At least two Afghans awaiting P-2 visas have been swept up in this crackdown, CNN has learned, and complain of Pakistani police persecution. Several others still residing in Pakistan told CNN about what they said was harassment by Pakistani police and the threat of deportation if they did not pay fines or bribes.