Pakistan Deports Afghanistani Refugees Linked to US Back to Taliban

DID Press: Pakistan has deported Afghanistani refugees who previously worked with U.S. forces and were awaiting resettlement in the United States, back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, according to Washington Post.

The report said the deportees are now living in fear and hiding, worried about Taliban retaliation.

At least seven Afghanitani who had served as contractors or local staff for the U.S. military were expelled from Pakistan in recent weeks, the newspaper reported. They are among roughly one million Afghanistani refugees facing forced return as part of Islamabad’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented migrants.

Several deported Afghanistani told The Washington Post that they were beaten and interrogated by Pakistani police before being forcibly sent back. “We can’t go outside; the Taliban know who we are,” one of them said.

A Pakistani Foreign Ministry official confirmed that some of those expelled had ties to U.S. forces but declined to give details, saying the deportations were part of the government’s “routine enforcement of immigration laws” and not specifically targeted at Afghanistani associated with the United States.

The report noted that the resettlement process for Afghanistani refugees has slowed sharply since Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The current administration has said that only applicants who meet the requirements for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) will be eligible for entry into the United States.

Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have condemned Pakistan’s mass deportations of Afghanistani refugees, warning that returnees face a high risk of arrest, torture, or even execution by the Taliban. U.N. reports have documented multiple cases of detention and killings of returnees.

Pakistan launched a major campaign last year to expel undocumented migrants—most of them Afghanistani. According to U.N. estimates, more than 600,000 people have been forced to return to Afghanistan under this policy.

Since the fall of Kabul in 2021, roughly 200,000 Afghanistani have been resettled in the United States, while thousands more remain stranded in Pakistan—caught between the hope of receiving U.S. visas and the threat of deportation back to Afghanistan.