As the Trump administration continues its efforts to clamp down on refugees and immigration policies, a recent federal decision is sending shockwaves through one of Sacramento’s major immigrant communities.
On March 21, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem decided to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan.
The designation expired on May 20 and the termination goes into effect July 14, according to a Department of Homeland Security press release issued last month.
TPS is a government protection granted by the Department of Homeland Security to eligible foreigners who are unable to return home due to unsafe conditions like violence, conflict, or other difficult situations.
The termination of TPS could leave thousands susceptible to deportation back to Afghanistan, which the Taliban runs. The Afghanistan government fell to the Taliban in 2021 after the United States and allied partners withdrew their troops from the country.
As of Sept. 2024, the U.S. provided over 800,000 individuals with TPS protection from 16 countries. Almost 9,000 of those individuals are Afghans.
In a news release, Noem stated that the decision to remove TPS from Afghans in the U.S. is because they no longer meet the requirements for a TPS designation.
Noem said in the release, “Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevents them from returning to their home country.”
She also, “determined that permitting Afghan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”
Afghan-American Foundation Board Vice Chair Babak Mustafa denied the claim and said the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated since 2021 in terms of human rights issues and health services.
“Girls cannot attend school above sixth grade, women cannot work — they are basically almost erased from society,” Mustafa said. “Many of the Afghans who are under TPS worked shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, as well as embassy aid workers and humanitarian workers, and they came here because they were afraid of being hunted down.”
Our neighbors, co-workers, friends
According to Mustafa, the impact of the protection removal is going to be “extremely significant,” especially in Sacramento, which has one of the highest concentrations of Afghan evacuees in the United States.
Mustafa said there are an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Afghans living in Greater Sacramento.
“If you go to a school district, for example, at San Juan School District, one of the highest concentrations of children in these schools are Afghan evacuees,” Mustafa said. “These Afghans, over the past four years, [have] found safety here. They built their lives from scratch. They became our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends.”
Mustafa said the Afghan-American Foundation strongly denounces the decision by the Trump administration.
“We believe that this is a reckless decision that strips sort of vital protection from thousands of Afghans, many of whom were evacuated by our own government, and were brought to safety in the United States,” Mustafa said. “Our own government helped resettle these Afghans, and now we say no; now you have to go back to a country that is engulfed with a deteriorating humanitarian crisis as well as human rights, specifically for women and children.”
What happens without TPS?
Opening Doors is a local nonprofit that provides many services to immigrants, refugees and survivors of trafficking.
One of those services is pro bono immigration legal services like applying to become a U.S. citizen.The organization also helps people file for TPS, work authorization and deportation defense, according to CEO of Opening Doors Jessie Mabry.
Afghanistan currently has the highest level of travel advisory threats from the U.S. Department of State. Mabry added most of the Afghans in the U.S. have come seeking safety and would be targets of the Taliban.
“It is incredibly dangerous to deport Afghans in the U.S. back to Afghanistan,” Mabry said. “The vast majority of Afghans who have come here seeking safety are at risk at home because of their affiliation with the U.S. They may have been interpreters, they may have worked for military contractors, or they may have been a journalist, or part of the judiciary system, or something along those lines.”
Mabry also spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about what happens when TPS is revoked.
“Anyone who has TPS as their sole status…they will essentially revert back to their previous immigration status,” Mabry told Insight. “If they have no other status, they will revert to being undocumented and may potentially lose their work authorization as well and be potentially eligible for deportation.”
Mabry said any members of the Afghan community who have TPS as their only status should contact Opening Doors to try and get connected with legal services, asylum applications or other forms of immigration relief.
According to Mabry, many elected officials have supported the continued protection of Afghans in the U.S. She said a court case challenging the termination of TPS for Afghanistan is working its way through the court system.
‘Going into hiding’
Khoban Kochai is a board member at Opening Doors. She was born in Afghanistan and fled the country as a young girl with her family during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. Kochai’s family initially stayed in a refugee camp in Pakistan before emigrating to the United States — first Alabama, then California.
Speaking with CapRadio’s Insight Kochai said while other generations of Afghans have come to the U.S. after her, they share some common bonds.
“I think about the strife of the Afghan people over the last 40 years,” she said. “We’re a community that has been displaced for so long now.”
Kochai said some local Afghans — including people with pending asylum claims, humanitarian parole or other statuses — recently received letters saying TPS is no longer available and they need to leave the country. She said she believes these notifications may have been sent to anyone that had TPS at some point in the past, even if they no longer do.
But the result, Kochai said, has been “complete confusion and panic.”
“There's just all of these situations that are just really, really horrible,” she said. “Overall in the community…it's just this sense of fear and panic of ‘am I next? Is this going to affect me? Am I going to get a letter? Is my child safe going to school?’”
Kochai said some Afghan families have pulled their children out of class because they feared being targeted, or stopped visiting the hospital. “They’re sort of going into hiding,” she explained.
Regarding DHS’s statements that the security situation in Afghanistan has improved, Kochai says she recently visited the country and said while some things have stabilized, there have not been significant changes.
“That’s all under a cloud of fear, that guilt by association for folks that have any type of connection to the allied forces [or] the previous government that was in place,” Kochai said. “There’s really not a family or a household in Afghanistan that you’ll come by, where some person isn’t in fear of their life.”
