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MSNBC: These brave Afghans helped the U.S. after 9/11. Now the U.S. wants to deport them.
MSNBC - These brave Afghans helped the U.S. after 9/11. Now the U.S. wants to deport them.
The Trump administration claims Afghans in the U.S. under temporary protected status no longer meet the threshold for protection.
May 3, 2025, 8:54 AM EDT
By Muhammad Tahir, formerly of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
It was a bitterly cold evening when I arrived in Kabul on a U.N.-chartered flight in early 2002. The city, like much of Afghanistan, was in turmoil. The trauma of Al Qaeda’s deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States was still raw, U.S. forces were advancing from the north, the Taliban was retreating south, and ordinary Afghans in the middle were torn between fear and the first flickers of hope.
U.S. airstrikes lit up the sky, but it was Afghans opposed to the Taliban who moved on the ground — risking everything to help the U.S. pursue justice for 9/11. Armed with little more than battered rifles and unshakable hope, they stepped into the fight, driven by a belief in a future they were told the U.S. would help them build.
“You’re finally here,” an old man outside Bagram Airfield told me. “Maybe now my grandchildren will have a future.”
In the weeks that followed, I reported from the front lines as Kabul bureau chief for Turkey’s Ihlas News Agency. Embedded with U.S. troops, I watched Afghan civilians — students, farmers, former resistance fighters — step forward to support the U.S. mission.
Now, the United States is telling Afghans who resettled in the U.S. after helping it fight the Taliban that they’ve got to self-deport by May 20 — back to a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. “If America can’t honor its word to those who bled for it,” a retired U.S. colonel told me, “why would anyone trust us again? This isn’t just immigration policy — it’s a test of our moral credibility. And we’re failing.”
/snip
The Trump administration claims Afghans in the U.S. under temporary protected status no longer meet the threshold for protection.
May 3, 2025, 8:54 AM EDT
By Muhammad Tahir, formerly of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
It was a bitterly cold evening when I arrived in Kabul on a U.N.-chartered flight in early 2002. The city, like much of Afghanistan, was in turmoil. The trauma of Al Qaeda’s deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States was still raw, U.S. forces were advancing from the north, the Taliban was retreating south, and ordinary Afghans in the middle were torn between fear and the first flickers of hope.
U.S. airstrikes lit up the sky, but it was Afghans opposed to the Taliban who moved on the ground — risking everything to help the U.S. pursue justice for 9/11. Armed with little more than battered rifles and unshakable hope, they stepped into the fight, driven by a belief in a future they were told the U.S. would help them build.
“You’re finally here,” an old man outside Bagram Airfield told me. “Maybe now my grandchildren will have a future.”
In the weeks that followed, I reported from the front lines as Kabul bureau chief for Turkey’s Ihlas News Agency. Embedded with U.S. troops, I watched Afghan civilians — students, farmers, former resistance fighters — step forward to support the U.S. mission.
Now, the United States is telling Afghans who resettled in the U.S. after helping it fight the Taliban that they’ve got to self-deport by May 20 — back to a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. “If America can’t honor its word to those who bled for it,” a retired U.S. colonel told me, “why would anyone trust us again? This isn’t just immigration policy — it’s a test of our moral credibility. And we’re failing.”
/snip
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