The Trump administration is reportedly preparing the first large-scale removal flight of Afghans back toward Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, routing more than 150 detained Afghans through Pakistan because the United States has no diplomatic relations with the Taliban government. According to The New York Times, which cited three U.S. officials, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has moved Afghan detainees from facilities across the country to Louisiana in recent days, and a chartered flight is expected to depart as soon as Monday, November 2. The officials told the Times that the deportation is, in effect, to Afghanistan, and that detainees have been told the same.
Source: Global Refuge, reporting The New York Times
The resettlement agency Global Refuge made the reported plan public in a statement on Friday, October 30, saying it was 'disturbed' by it and calling on the administration to halt or reverse it before the flight carries more than 150 Afghans to Pakistan. Reporting on the group expected to be flown out says it includes relatives of Afghans who helped the U.S. military before the fall of Kabul in 2021, and at least one man who fears persecution under the Taliban because he is gay. Those details come from officials and advocates familiar with the preparations; the administration itself has published no passenger list, no destination notice and no announcement.
What officials and advocates are saying
The administration has not announced the plan, and the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on it, Global Refuge said. In a statement reported by The Independent, an ICE spokesperson said the agency 'does not comment on prospective removal operations, including flight schedules, passenger manifests, destinations, or individual case details,' citing operational security and officer safety. That means the core facts of the reported flight — its date, its size and its final destination — currently rest on the accounts of the three officials who spoke to the Times, on court filings in an individual detainee's case, and on what detainees and their lawyers say they have been told.
Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Global Refuge, put the agency's objection in stark terms in Friday's statement: 'On Monday, our government plans to charter one back to their persecutors' hands,' she said, referring to a flight out of Louisiana. Human Rights First had already warned on October 29 that the planned operation could involve hundreds of Afghans and result in their forced return to Afghanistan through Pakistan, and it called for the flights to be stopped and for congressional oversight, according to the National Immigration Forum's October 30 policy bulletin.
Source: National Immigration Forum policy bulletin
Global Refuge has called on Congress and the administration to halt or reverse the reported flight; to require DHS to confirm that no one slated for removal holds a court order barring deportation to Afghanistan; to resolve pending legal challenges first; and to fully resume USCIS processing of Afghans' applications for protection and lawful status.
How the route through Pakistan would work
Under the reported arrangement, the charter flight would land in Pakistan, and Pakistani authorities would then expel the group across the border into Afghanistan. Officials described that routing to the Times as a way around a basic logistical problem: Washington does not recognise or deal directly with the Taliban administration that has ruled Afghanistan since the American military withdrawal in 2021, so there is no direct-return channel. The flight would therefore be recorded as a removal to Pakistan, while its expected end point, according to the officials who described it, is Afghanistan itself.
Pakistan, advocates stress, is not a safe end point either. Since 2023, Pakistan's government has expelled or forced the return of more than 2.7 million Afghans, and it has vowed to remove the roughly 1.5 million who remain, regardless of immigration status, according to Global Refuge. A February 2026 Pakistani plan targeted 19,973 Afghan refugees who were awaiting U.S. resettlement, and the U.N. refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration recorded 86,644 arrests or detentions in Pakistan between January 1 and October 17, most involving undocumented Afghans or Afghan Citizen Card holders, according to AfghanEvac's reporting summarised by VisaVerge.
Source: VisaVerge, summarising AfghanEvac and Bloomberg reporting
Background: third-country removals and the wider campaign
The reported flight marks an escalation of the administration's third-country removals, which have already sent deportees to countries including South Sudan and the Central African Republic. AfghanEvac, the organisation supporting Afghans who worked with U.S. forces, said a flight carrying at least 10 Afghans arrived in the Central African Republic in the week before its October 26 update, following another flight that carried 12 people there in August. AfghanEvac also tallied at least 30 reports since October 14 about possible transfers or deportations, involving 15 detention facilities in 11 U.S. states.
It also comes amid a broader campaign affecting Afghans in the United States, Global Refuge said: a travel ban that bars most Afghans from entering the country, the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan, and a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services processing freeze that has left thousands of Afghans already in the country in limbo. Bloomberg first reported the preparations for a Pakistan flight on Monday, October 26, citing a federal official, immigration lawyers and advocacy groups; at that stage, detainees and their lawyers had not seen travel documents naming a destination, and officials had not confirmed the number of people involved or whether Pakistan would accept them.
The protection question that remains unanswered
Some Afghans in the United States hold court protections against return to Afghanistan because of the persecution they would likely face there. It remains unknown whether anyone scheduled for the November flight holds such an order. That is the specific point Global Refuge has asked DHS to confirm before any departure: that no one on the flight holds a court order barring deportation to Afghanistan, and that pending legal challenges are resolved first. Court filings in the case of one Afghan detainee indicate that a flight is expected to leave Louisiana within the first week of November, The Independent reported.
What happens next
If the reported timetable holds, the first flight could leave Louisiana as soon as Monday, November 2, with more than 150 people aboard. Between now and then, the open questions are whether a court intervenes, whether Congress presses DHS for the confirmation advocates are demanding, and whether the administration confirms or alters the plan it has so far declined to discuss. For the Punjabi and wider South Asian diaspora in the United States, the case is being watched as the sharpest test yet of the third-country removal policy: a removal recorded to one country, with the people on board told their real destination is the country they fled.