Afghan refugees feel ‘betrayed’ by Trump order

“It’s like the United States doesn’t really understand what I did for this country, it’s a betrayal,” Abdullah told the BBC.

He fled Afghanistan with his parents amid the US withdrawal in August 2021 and is now a paratrooper for the US Army. He worries he can’t even help save his sister and her husband, because President Donald Trump’s executive order suspended a resettlement program.

The order cancels all flights and applications for Afghan refugees, with no exemptions for families in any active services.

Trump argues that the decision addresses “record levels of migration” that threaten “the availability of resources for Americans.”

But Abdullah and several other Afghan refugees have told the BBC they feel the US has “turned its back” on them, despite years of working with US officials, soldiers and non-profit organizations in Afghanistan. We’re not using their real names because they worry that doing so could jeopardize their cases or put their families at risk.

As soon as Abdullah heard about the order, he called his sister. “She was crying, she was losing all hope,” he said. They believe their work has made them a target of the Taliban government that took power in 2021.

“The worry, it’s just unimaginable. She thinks we’ll never see each other again,” he says.

During the war, Abdullah says he was an interpreter for American forces. When he left Afghanistan, his sister and her husband did not get passports in time to board the flight.

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban government, told the BBC that there is an amnesty for anyone who worked with international forces and that all Afghans can “live in the country without any fear”. He claims that these refugees are “economic migrants”.

But a UN report in 2023 cast doubt on the Taliban government’s assurances. It found that hundreds of former government officials and members of the armed forces were reportedly killed despite a general amnesty.

Abdullah’s sister and her husband had completed the medical examination and interview required for resettlement in the US. The BBC has seen a US Department of Defense document supporting their application.

Now Abdullah says Trump’s insistence that immigration is too high does not justify separating him from his family. He describes sleepless nights, and says the anxiety is affecting his work in his combat unit, while serving the United States.

Babak, a former legal adviser to the Afghan Air Force, is still in hiding in Afghanistan.

“They’re not just breaking their promise to us – they’re breaking us,” he says.

The BBC has seen letters from the United Nations confirming his role, as well as a letter from a LT Colonel in the US Air Force supporting his asylum claim. The support said he advised on strikes targeting militants associated with both the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

Babak cannot understand the President’s decision, given that he worked with American soldiers. “We risked our lives because of those missions. Now we are in grave danger,” he says.

He is moving his wife and young son from location to location, trying desperately to remain hidden. He claims that his brother was tortured for his whereabouts. The BBC cannot verify this part of its story, given the nature of its claims.

Babak is appealing to Trump and his national security adviser Mike Waltz to change their minds.

“Mike Waltz, you served in Afghanistan. Please encourage the President,” he tells us.

Before saying goodbye, he says: “The one ray of light that we are holding on to has been extinguished.”

Ahmed managed to fly to the US amid the chaos of the return, but is now separated from his family. They felt they had no choice but to leave their father, mother and teenage siblings behind.

If he and his father had not worked with the US, he says, his family would not have been a target of the Taliban government. He said, “I can’t sleep knowing that I’m a reason I’m in this situation.”

Before the Taliban takeover, Ahmed worked for a non-profit called the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which was co-founded by the US 13 years ago and headquartered in Washington. He says the work he is proud of is setting up a special court to address abuses against women.

But she claimed that her work in the OGP and her advocacy for women made her a target and she was shot by Taliban fighters in 2021, before the Taliban took over the country.

The BBC has seen a letter from a hospital in Pennsylvania assessing “evidence of injury from bullets and bullet fragments”, which they say is “consistent with his account of what happened to him in Kabul”.

Making matters worse, he says his family is also in danger because his father was a colonel with the Afghan army and assisted the CIA. The BBC has seen a certificate, provided by the Afghan National Security Forces, thanking his father for his service.

Ahmed says that the Taliban government has harassed his parents, brothers and sisters, so he fled to Pakistan. The BBC has seen pictures of Ahmed’s father and brother being treated in a hospital for injuries he claims were inflicted by people in the Taliban government.

His family had completed several stages of the rehabilitation programme. He says he also provided evidence that he has enough money to support his family when they reach the US, without any government help.

Now Ahmed says that the situation is critical. His family is in Pakistan on a visa which will expire within months. They have contacted IOM and have been told to “be patient”.

The head of #Afghanevac, a non-profit group that helps eligible Afghan refugees resettle, said he estimated 10,000-15,000 people were in the late stages of their applications.

Mina, who is pregnant, has been waiting for a flight out of Islamabad for six months. She worries that her terror will threaten her unborn child. “If I lose the baby, I’ll kill myself,” she told the BBC.

She says she used to protest for women’s rights, even when the Taliban government took control of Afghanistan. She claims that she was arrested in 2023 and detained overnight.

“Even then I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan. I went into hiding after my release, but they called me and said next time, they will kill me,” she says.

Meena is worried that the Pakistani government will send her back to Afghanistan. This is partly because Pakistan will not grant asylum to Afghan refugees indefinitely.

The country has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees from its neighbor over decades of instability in the region. According to the UN refugee agency, the country hosts three million Afghan citizens, of whom about 1.4 million are documented.

As cross-border tensions with the Taliban government flare up, there is growing concern over the fate of Afghans in Pakistan with reports of alleged intimidation and detention. The UN special coordinator has said he is concerned and that Afghans in the region deserve better treatment.

Pakistan’s government says it is expelling foreign nationals who are in the country illegally back to Afghanistan and confirmed the search raid in January.

According to IOM, more than 795,000 Afghans have been expelled from Pakistan since last September.

Afghan refugees we are told are caught between a homeland where their lives are in danger, and a host country whose patience is running out.

They were pinning their hopes on America – but it seemed like that one safe harbor had suddenly been blocked by the new president until further notice.