Afghans in California in shock in the middle of the Trump Administration Prohibition of Voyager, end of deportation of deportation

The Afghans who have moved to California have been in shock in recent months and weeks, while the Trump administration has moved to end the deportation protections in the midst of increasing efforts to prevent Afghan nationals from coming to the United States more

This week, despite the efforts of an organization continuing to maintain the protections, the Trump administration ended the temporary protection status for the Afghans, which the United States granted in May 2022 after it withdrew the military forces of Afghanistan. The status has enabled Afghans to come to the United States and obtain work permit, but it has not provided a course to citizenship.

“People are desperate,” said Shawn Vandiver, founder and president of Afghanevac, a non -profit organization that supports the safe relocation of Afghan allies. “They have followed all the rules. They did everything that the United States asked them to do, and at every street corner, the Trump administration blocked them.”

The Trump administration in January suspended Afghan refugee programs and canceled the flights planned for Afghans authorized by the government. In May, the State Department sent dismissal notices to the staff of the Afghan Rafocation Coordinator, known as Care, the agency responsible for working to ensure that Afghans settled in the United States with the support of the government. And in June, Trump instituted a travel ban, suspended trips for Afghan nationals in the United States and letting families hoping to meet in the limbo.

The Afghans have become more and more in the efforts of the Trump administration to increase deportations. In San Diego, an Afghan national who worked as a translator for the American army and had obtained a humanitarian conditional release was detained after attending an asylum hearing at the immigration court.

The Ministry of Internal Security announced in May that it would end the temporary protection status for the Afghans. Secretary Kristi Noem said conditions in Afghanistan “do not meet the requirements of a TPS designation.”

In A press releaseThe ministry said: “The secretary has determined that, on the whole, there are notable improvements in security and the economic situation so that the return of Afghan nationals in Afghanistan does not constitute a threat to their personal security due to an armed conflict in progress or extraordinary and temporary conditions.”

Many organizations that help move the Afghans have criticized this decision, claiming that conditions in Afghanistan, now under the Taliban, are not sure for those who fled, especially for those who helped the US military during the war. Casa, a national organization for defenders, filed a complaint against the DHS, contesting the end of TP for Afghans, as well as for Cameroonians, as illegal.

On Monday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request from the Casa to postpone the actions of the agency. THE The case remains in progress In the Maryland American district court.

In a statement, DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin said that people who arrived on TPS can still request asylum and other protections. She declared that the end of the TPS “strengthens the national interest and the statutory provision according to which TPS is in fact designed to be temporary”.

TPS was a crucial judgment for the Afghans who reached the United States but whose asylum applications, or for the special immigrant visas granted to the Afghans who have worked with the United States government, are still pending, taken in major arrears.

Halema Wali, co-director in Afghans for a better future, a non-profit organization that defends Afghan refugees in the New York metropolitan region and supported families entering the United States of Tijuana, said almost all 800 members of the organization are on TPS.

“They are petrified,” said Wali. “They do not know how to approach this, and honestly, we get rid to understand how we make them secure when the only thing that protected them from the expulsion has disappeared.”

Global Refuge, an organization that has resettled thousands of Afghans, said that up to 11,700 Afghans in the United States are now vulnerable to expulsion, and those who have no other means of obtaining legal status or waiting requests could lose work permit.

“The end of TP does not correspond to the reality of the circumstances on the ground in Afghanistan”, Krish O’mara Vignarajah, Managing Director of Global Refuge, said in a press release. “The conditions remain disastrous, in particular for the allies who supported the American mission, as well as for women, girls, religious minorities and ethnic groups targeted by the Taliban. Anxiety among our Afghan customers is real and growing. ”

Vignarajah called on Congress to establish a way to citizenship for Afghans.

California has become the home of many Afghan refugees – up to 58,600 calls the state, more than any other state, According to the Policy Institute migration. The Greater Sacramento Region welcomes some 20,000 Afghan refugees, one of the largest communities in the United States

The city of Fremont, which has a district known as “Little Kabul” for its range of stores and Afghan restaurants,, raised almost half a million dollars For its Afghan Refugee Help Fund, launched in 2021, to help the newly arrived Afghans.

Harris Mojadedi, an Afghan American defender in the Fremont region, said that there was a deep uncertainty in the midfielder of changing immigration policies. The Afghans of the community began to receive self-carrying opinions from the DHS, and many have trouble understanding what comes next.

He knows an Afghan couple, where a spouse has TP and the other is an American citizen, who lives every day as if it was their last together. Many Afghans are afraid to express themselves, he said, for fear of the government’s remuneration. People are afraid of putting their children at school or calling the police if they are victims of crimes, he said.

“As we see with other communities, there is a lot of fear in the [Afghan] community, ”said Mojadedi, referring to the immigration raids that have largely affected the Latin community.

Shala Gafary, a lawyer who leads a team focused on the legal assistance of Afghans during non -profit human rights rights, said that they still saw the consequences of the American chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where thousands of Afghans have been separated. She helped families submit to requests for moving to the United States and finding their families as part of a program facilitated by the Biden administration.

But as soon as Trump came into office, he issued a prescription to suspend American refugee programs and canceled the flights planned to bring some 1,660 Afghans authorized by the US government to resettle in the United States, including members of the US military personnel in active service.

Gafary and other immigration lawyers feed family calls every day asking what they can do. And she has no answer for them. She had to instruct other lawyers – who ask what they should tell their customers – that everything they can do is tell the truth about Afghan families, that there are no options available.

“Since January, this is only bad news for the Afghan population,” said Gafary.

Back in Afghanistan, thousands of people living under the Taliban regime care about their future. Their options to make a life elsewhere have shrunk in an exponential way, while the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Iran have started to expel Afghan refugees en masse, and Trump placed Afghanistan on the list of American travel bans earlier this year.

For Afghan Americans in California who had impatiently waited for the arrival of parents who asked for asylum in the United States, the repression of Trump’s immigration was overwhelming.

A resident of southern California, an American 26-year-old American woman, told Times that seven of her family members, including her grandmother and several cousins, were now in limbo after having approved their visas but no confirmation that the United States allowed them.

The woman, who asked for anonymity because she fears the repercussions of the Trump administration for her family members who are still hoping to ask for asylum in the United States, said her family hoped that politics will move and that they will be left because they have no other option.

She said that the young girls in her family had not been able to go to school, and that another cousin who worked for an international aid organization is no longer authorized to work.

“Everyone holds their breath to see what is going on then,” she said. “The best thing we can do is hope for the best, do what we can and register and keep your head high.”