“The ‘T’ is there for a reason”

UPDATE: Late Monday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Department of Homeland Security from ending temporary protected status for immigrants from Afghanistan. The status was set to expire at midnight. The court said its order will last for one week while it considers arguments from both sides in a lawsuit filed against DHS on behalf of Afghan TPS recipients. 

OUR EARLIER REPORT: Monday was the expiration date for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s temporary protected status designation for Afghanistan. The designation gave Afghan nationals temporary legal status, allowing them to live and work in the United States without fear of detention or deportation. DHS granted TPS to thousands of Afghan nationals in 2022, several months after the Taliban took control of the country.

Now, those Afghans must apply for asylum or face the possibility that they could be forced to leave the country.

“These individuals are not only our allies, but our friends, employees, and neighbors,” said Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum. “The termination of TPS for Afghans will disrupt the lives of thousands of beneficiaries [and] harm the communities that have integrated them.”

The Trump White House says the end to many Afghans’ temporary protected status is needed to restore a sense of order to the U.S. immigration system. The Department of Homeland Security argues the situation in Afghanistan has stabilized since U.S. troops withdrew and the Taliban took over in 2021. Supporters of the policy say Afghans who fear persecution if they return can apply for asylum. But Afghans and their American sponsors say that the United States is putting thousands of law-abiding refugees at risk of deportation to a country that even the U.S. government says isn’t safe.

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, the new leaders at DHS chose to remove the TPS designation from Afghanistan. That decision meant roughly 12,000 Afghan nationals—many of whom supported U.S. forces in Afghanistan, are religious minorities, or are women—in the United States would lose at least some protection against detention or deportation.

In a Federal Register notice in May, DHS explained that the armed conflict between the Taliban and its opponents had abated and that the country’s GDP showed signs of life. Further, it was not in the United States’ best interest to allow foreign nationals to continue residing within U.S. borders, the department said.

Previous administrations have used TPS to give refugees a form of legal status that never expires, according to Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. Instead of using the TPS designation to give individuals from disaster-ridden nations a place to stay until it is safe for them to return home, presidential administrations have used it to grant refugees quasi-permanent status in the United States, Arthur said.

“The Trump administration is … attempting to return TPS to its limited status,” Arthur said. “The ‘T’ is there for a reason. It’s supposed to be temporary.”

But advocates argue that Afghanistan satisfies that “temporary” requirement of a TPS designation. While El Salvador has had a TPS designation for roughly 25 years, Afghanistan has had one for only about three years. They also argue that the designation helps protect Afghan nationals from living under the control of what the White House sees as a terrorist organization.

“Afghanistan ended up on the list of the travel ban countries [in] the proclamation that came out on June 4 and went into effect on June 9,” said Daniel Salazar, a refugee protection and policy advisor at Global Refuge. “[The proclamation] says the Taliban is classified as a terrorist organization from the United States government's perspective, and it’s not a competent state authority that can provide the vetting and whatnot that helps screen and vet foreign nationals before they come to the United States.”

The U.S. Department of State also advises Americans not to travel to Afghanistan under any circumstances. Civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, and kidnapping are listed among the top reasons Americans shouldn’t visit the country.

For those who aren’t Americans, the situation in Afghanistan is still dire.

“Taliban authorities continue to impose a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, severely restricting [the] religious freedom and daily lives of all Afghans, including religious minorities and those with different views of Islam,” Stephen Schneck, a commissioner with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said in a statement provided to WORLD. “Afghans, in particular Christians, the Hazara Shi’a community, and Ahmadiyya Muslims, have reported to USCIRF being detained and tortured for their religious beliefs and fear for their return.”

But Andrew Arthur from the Center for Immigration Studies argues that the situation in Afghanistan has improved.

“Most of the violence, the terrorism, that has racked Afghanistan has ended. There are sporadic incidents within the country, but no one territory where anybody couldn’t safely return to,” Arthur said. “There are 41 million people living in Afghanistan, and the vast majority of the population there isn’t at any risk at all. Personally, I wouldn’t want to move to Afghanistan, but when more than 40 million people live in a country, it would indicate that it is a place that people can live in.”

Furthermore, the termination of temporary protected status does not automatically equate to thousands of Afghans getting deported. “The popular conception of most immigration is what people see on sitcoms, where somebody gets picked up and the next thing you know they’re on an airliner,” Arthur said. “That’s not going to happen in this situation. In order to remove these individuals, the government’s going to have to secure orders of removal, which will give truly needy individuals the opportunity to apply for protection.”

Those on TPS who cannot return to Afghanistan for fear of persecution do have the opportunity to apply for asylum, Arthur said. But Matthew Soerens, vice president of policy and advocacy at World Relief, said that granting asylum isn’t an objective process.

“We’d all love to think it’s this objective, ‘Here’s what the law says, here’s the facts of the case,’” Soerens explained. “But if you look at the wide variation between approval rates among different judges, you have some judges who approve 80% of the cases that come before them … and you have other judges who approve 5% of the cases that come before them.”

But Afghanistan has a TPS designation in the first place largely because, “basically everybody from that country probably has a pretty good asylum claim at this point,” Soerens said. “That is why you would, on a temporary basis, offer temporary protective status.”

But DHS’s recent assertion that the situation in Afghanistan has improved has thrown a wrench into the asylum approval process. Julie Tisdale is a member of Apostles Raleigh, an Anglican church in Raleigh, N.C. Her church congregation currently includes 20 Afghans who were staying in the United States on humanitarian parole, another immigration program, until the Trump administration ordered them to leave the country earlier this year.

Since then, authorities haven’t forcibly deported any of the Afghans, all of whom face the threat of persecution based on their religious beliefs if they return to their home country. But the government also hasn’t offered them any assurances that they’ll be allowed to stay in the country. The congregation has set aside money to pay for the Afghans’ legal fees as they fight to stay in the country.

“We did have an asylum hearing for one of the Afghans recently in the last few weeks,” Tisdale told WORLD. “The immigration attorney thought that that case was very, very strong. It was the sort of case that has been accepted in the past … And in this case, the asylum claim was rejected. And one of the reasons for that was that DHS has designated Afghanistan is safe. So we are appealing that.”

Some Afghans from Apostles Raleigh met with folks at USCIRF, Tisdale said. She explained that they were trying to push the government to let them stay in the country so that they wouldn’t face persecution in their home country.

Stephen Schneck, a commissioner for USCIRF, said he urged the U.S. government to extend temporary protected status for Afghans in the United States. “USCIRF is also deeply concerned about the end of humanitarian parole for Afghans,” he added, referring to the program that allowed the Afghans at Apostles Raleigh to stay in the United States. “These religious communities, if forced to return to Afghanistan, face the grave risk of persecution, torture, or other serious human rights violations.”

“We just celebrated the 4th of July, we just celebrated freedom,” said Julie Tisdale. “And the story that we all learn when we’re six [years old] in school is about people coming to America for religious freedom, and that is all these people are doing. They have come to America so that they can worship God freely, openly—so that they will not be persecuted for their faith.”