US Plans to Fly Afghan Immigrants Through Pakistan to Afghanistan, With Over 150 Expected to Be Deported
The Trump administration plans to fly Afghan immigrants from Louisiana to Pakistan, where they are expected to be expelled across the border into Afghanistan, according to Reuters. More than 150 Afghans are expected to be deported under the plan, PBS NewsHour reported on November 2.
Many of the Afghans facing removal fled Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021 and the U.S. withdrawal that year. The Taliban is the group that has governed Afghanistan since 2021. The Trump administration is prioritizing the deportation of Afghan nationals who were previously ordered to leave the United States.
The route runs through Pakistan, which has been pushing out large numbers of Afghans itself. As of November 30, 2025, about one million of the three million Afghans living in Pakistan had been deported or forced to return to Afghanistan that year, according to The New York Times.
Removals to Afghanistan have depended heavily on the United Arab Emirates. A May 2024 report by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, which reviews the department's operations, said the UAE had become an intermediary for removals carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In May 2026, ICE said it had removed Tariq Mohammad Intezar, a 25-year-old Afghan national who had pleaded guilty to abusive sexual contact, on a flight from New York's Kennedy airport that landed in Abu Dhabi.
Other countries have also carried out such removals. In February, a charter flight carrying 20 Afghan men convicted of crimes by German courts left Leipzig for Kabul, the Afghan capital, according to The New York Times.
The Taliban government has asked the United States to act responsibly when deporting Afghan immigrants back to Afghanistan, Reuters reported on November 1.
On November 2, U.S. Representative Scott Peters urged the Trump administration to cancel immediately the deportation flights carrying Afghans and Iranians to Afghanistan and Iran.
