U.S. Plans Deportation Flight of Afghans to Pakistan as Early as Monday, Officials Say

The Trump administration is preparing to put Afghan immigrants and asylum seekers on a chartered deportation flight to Pakistan, with departure possible as early as Monday, Nov. 2. The operation has not been publicly announced.

A senior administration official confirmed the plan to NBC News. Three U.S. officials described it to The New York Times, and a federal official described it to Bloomberg. The Times reported the group could exceed 150 people. The NBC account describes it as dozens.

Who is on the manifest

According to the senior official who spoke to NBC, the flight may carry people with final deportation orders, people denied asylum, and people whose temporary protected status the administration has terminated. Some arrived by crossing the border from Mexico. Some of their cases are still under review.

The Times reported that the group includes relatives of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military during the 20-year war, and at least one gay man. Court documents show at least one Afghan immigrant on the passenger list for a flight leaving Alexandria, Louisiana, in the first week of November. Lawyers for two other detainees received emails from federal officials telling them the same.

Shawn VanDiver, president of the San Diego-based group AfghanEvac, said at least 80 Afghans were moved to Louisiana in recent days from 34 other ICE facilities. Nineteen of them have no lawyer, he said. He added that hundreds more Afghans may be held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena.

Why Pakistan

The United States has no diplomatic relations with the Taliban government. That blocks the normal route for sending Afghans home. The Times reported that some Afghans in the U.S. also hold court-issued protections because they could face persecution if returned.

Three U.S. officials told the Times the deportations are effectively meant to send the detainees to Afghanistan. The Times reported that ICE has told the detainees themselves they are being sent there.

The senior official told NBC the plane could not land in Pakistan without Pakistan's knowledge and approval. What formal agreement exists between Washington and Islamabad is unclear. Pakistan's government has not said anything in the reporting to date.

The Department of Homeland Security said it could not confirm removal operations for operational security reasons. The White House referred questions to DHS. The State Department said it had no announcements planned. ICE did not respond to NBC's request for comment.

The administration's position

The senior official described the administration's view bluntly to NBC: "These individuals do not have status in our country, therefore we don't really care what happens to them."

That is the enforcement argument in its plainest form. Immigration law applies to people ordered removed, and a country is entitled to carry out those orders. President Trump halted refugee admissions, including for Afghans, when he returned to office last year. His administration has since deported thousands of people to countries that are not their own, many in Africa.

What the critics say

Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the resettlement group Global Refuge, called on the administration to halt or reverse the plan. "Pakistan is patently unsafe for Afghans," she said. "Deporting Afghans into that crackdown is a deliberate decision to put them in harm's way."

Pakistan began pressuring Afghans to leave in 2023. Global Refuge says the government has expelled more than 2.7 million Afghans since then and has vowed to remove about 1.5 million who remain, regardless of immigration status.

VanDiver said the Taliban "jails, tortures and kills the people it considers its enemies" and has hunted down former soldiers, police officers and the families of anyone who worked with the United States. "Sending someone there is not a deportation. It is a sentence," he said.

Uzra Zeya, a former U.S. diplomat and now president of Human Rights First, said arrangements with Kuwait, Qatar and now Pakistan amount to removals to places where people "may be at grave risk." Immigration lawyers have long argued third-country deals are a way around international bans on returning asylum seekers to the countries they fled. The United Nations has documented killings, arbitrary detention and torture of people tied to Afghanistan's former U.S.-backed government and security forces, according to Global Refuge.

What comes next

The legality of third-country deportation agreements is scheduled to be argued before the Supreme Court in December. That is weeks after the plane is set to leave.

The open questions are specific. Whether the administration has a signed agreement with Pakistan has not been disclosed. Neither has whether detainees with pending cases will be pulled from the manifest. Lawyers for those without counsel, including the 19 VanDiver identified, have until Monday to find out.