A federal court on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to put dozens of Afghan immigrants on a plane and send them back to Afghanistan, where many fear they will face persecution by the Taliban.
Judge Valerie Caproni of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York said that the United States could not send any Afghan nationals to Afghanistan this week, but she was sparse in her reasoning and did not address the dangers the deportees might face upon returning to Afghanistan.
The Trump administration has detained dozens of Afghan immigrants in recent days, the most expansive step so far to include Afghans in its wider immigration dragnet. To carry out the deportation, the United States plans to fly the Afghans to Pakistan, which would then send them across the border to Afghanistan.
The deportation flight was set leave Alexandria, La., early this month, according to officials and court filings. The judge’s order now prevents any of the Afghans from being sent back until Sunday, when block expires. But it does not put an end to the deportations altogether.
U.S. law prohibits the government from deporting people to countries where courts have ruled they would most likely face persecution or torture. It isn’t known whether any of the Afghans set for deportation have any individual court protections.
On Monday, 66 Congressional Democrats signed a letter calling for the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to cancel the flight. “Sending dozens of people back to one of the most dangerous countries on earth, and where they are likely to be targeted for their or their family’s suspected support of U.S. government or criticism of the Taliban, is a death sentence,” the letter said.
The administration has argued in court cases that some of the people fighting deportation to Afghanistan have already exhausted their legal options and that the courts’ authority to intervene now is limited.
Among the more than 150 Afghans targeted for mass expulsion is at least one woman, according to court filings obtained by The New York Times and a U.S. official, as well as at least one gay man and relatives of those who helped the U.S. military, The Times reported last week. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Afghanistan, and women have faced severe restrictions on work, travel and education. Beyond that, when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, those who helped U.S. forces were sometimes singled out for retribution.
Lawyers have stopped or delayed some of the individual deportations. On Monday, a judge delayed the deportation of a man whose wife worked with the U.S. military, by 14 days, his lawyer said. On Tuesday, a judge ordered the immediate release of the gay man. Both said they feared for their lives if they are returned to Afghanistan.
The Afghan woman, who was detained at the southern border in 2025 after entering the United States illegally, is Christian and worked as a journalist for a radio station in Afghanistan, according to court filings and her attorney.
The woman’s lawyers argued in an emergency court filing on Monday that her religious identity and work as a journalist would make her a target for persecution by the Taliban. Two of her colleagues at the station were killed in 2019 by unidentified gunmen.
The Taliban has imposed some of the harshest restrictions on women in the world, and hers would be one of the few known cases of a woman deported by the United States to Afghanistan. In September, an Afghan woman accused of supporting the Islamic State was sent back in the first successful use of an obscure court set up three decades ago to deport immigrants with ties to terrorist groups. She eventually agreed to the removal.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said that ICE “does not comment on prospective removal operations, including flight schedules, passenger manifests, destinations or individual case details.”
Some of the lawyers trying to stop the deportations argue that by transferring the Afghans to Pakistan, the United States is deporting people to a third country, one now at war with Afghanistan. That conflict, in addition to Afghanistan’s repressive Taliban government, they claim, puts the migrants at risk of torture or persecution, in violation of international treaties to which the United States is a party. Judge Caproni, in her order Tuesday, did not weigh in on that question.
Pakistan has deported or forced to return more than 2.7 million Afghans since 2023. Many have faced harassment and intimidation before being forced back into Afghanistan.
The Pakistani military did not respond to a request for comment on Pakistan’s exact role in the U.S. deportation plan.
In one court filing, the Trump administration disputed that deportations to Afghanistan via Pakistan amounted to third-country deportations because the immigrants would ultimately return to their country of origin after “transiting through” Pakistan.
A 2025 memo from the Homeland Security Department states that before receiving third-country deportees from the U.S., foreign governments must give credible “diplomatic assurances” that they will not be persecuted or tortured. Some of the lawyers for the detainees who are challenging their removal via Pakistan argue that there is no evidence that such assurances have been provided in their cases.
Even if the detainees’ lawyers were able to establish that the unusual arrangement with Pakistan amounted to a third-country deportation, that might not be sufficient to persuade the courts to intervene. In September, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration’s third-country deportation effort to continue by blocking a ruling from a lower-court judge that required more due process. Some district court judges have interpreted it as giving a green light to third-country deportations, at least for now.
Taliban officials responded to the planned deportation with social media posts expressing concern about sending Afghan citizens to Pakistan and offering to arrange for the return of Afghan citizens directly.
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has restricted immigration for Afghans who helped the American war effort, deported others to countries in Africa, and pushed some, who are stranded in a former U.S. military camp in Qatar, to return to Afghanistan voluntarily.
“If this works through Pakistan, the playbook is set: Send people to a third country and let that country finish the job,” said Shawn VanDiver, the president of the rights group AfghanEvac. “Once it’s done, it gets easier every time after, including for the people at Camp As Sayliyah,” he added, referring to the military camp in Qatar where more than 1,000 Afghans with ties to U.S. service, many of them women and children, have been waiting for resettlement for years.
The woman on this month’s deportation flight had represented herself in an application for asylum after coming to the United States in 2025, according to government and court documents. The case was pretermitted, or dismissed without a trial, under a provision that allows judges to throw out cases in which an applicant fails to fully answer questions on a screening.
The deportation, her attorney said in the court filing today, would carry “grave risk of persecution, torture and death.” The woman requested that anonymity out of fear for her safety if she is deported.
Salehi, an Afghan man who is also scheduled for the deportation, entered America illegally in 2024, according to government documents. According to his asylum application, Salehi aided a resistance front at war with the Taliban and was arrested and beaten by the Taliban.
Salehi was denied asylum by an immigration judge and is preparing to file a challenge to his deportation. He requested he be identified only by his last name out of fear for his safety.
“This is the end for me,” he said in an interview from prison. “I can’t even imagine what is going to happen if I return because of my last experience with the Taliban.”
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