Afghan man on Long Island targeted for deportation under Trump policy despite working with U.S. soldiers in home country

He risked his life in Afghanistan working with U.S. soldiers on a military base in his homeland, where, he said, he would regularly check under vehicles for bombs.

Now living in Nassau County, the Afghan man said he was hoping the U.S. would back him up after American forces evacuated from his country in August 2021, ending a 20-year war and leaving the Taliban to storm back into power. Instead, today he says he feels like a wanted man as President Donald Trump targets Afghan nationals amid his mass deportation campaign.

If the administration deports him, the man, 31, who asked not to be named due to fear for his safety, said he believes he won't survive the Taliban. "If they send me back, they will humiliate me and kill me," he said. He does not have legal status as he awaits a decision on his asylum application.

"I want to ask him [Trump], what did we do wrong? What sin did we commit?" he said through a translator. "Just like when the Americans came in and we made ... a promise to them to help them and to protect them, we are asking for that same favor in return, just like we welcomed them with open arms."

Ferida Osman-Elsayed, an immigration attorney at the Central American Refugee Center in Hempstead, is handling the Nassau man's case. Her agency has more than 50 similar cases.

"They fear for their futures. They fear for their lives," Osman-Elsayed said of Afghan immigrants to the U.S. "They fear if they're deported to Afghanistan that they're going to be killed, tortured or kidnapped."

Crackdown on Afghans

After the shooting of two National Guard members — one of them fatally — on Nov. 26 near the White House by an Afghan national, Trump, calling it an "act of terror," cracked down on immigrants from Afghanistan and other nations. 

He halted immigration applications filed by Afghans, barred them from entering the U.S. and paused all asylum decisions for migrants in the United States, including Afghans.

He also ordered officials to review the green cards of people from 19 countries, including Afghanistan, and to reassess asylum applications approved under President Joe Biden's administration.

More than 190,000 Afghans, many of whom risked their lives, were brought here under Biden programs called "Operation Allies Welcome" and "Operation Enduring Welcome," according to the U.S. State Department. The programs granted Afghans temporary legal status for two years while they applied for permanent status, or green cards, mainly through asylum or Special Immigrant Visas.

Others, like the man in Nassau, did not come here through the programs but instead came on their own after the U.S. evacuation and applied for asylum or a Special Immigrant Visa. All told, tens of thousands of Afghans who fled have received permanent legal status.

Fleeing Kabul

The United States went into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to try to dismantle the al-Qaida network. At the end of his first term, Trump agreed to a U.S. military withdrawal, which Biden carried out. The Taliban then took over, killing and torturing opponents, conducting public lashings and executions, and crushing free speech. The Taliban considers those who aided the United States to be traitors.

The man in Nassau County said he worked on a U.S.-run military base in Kabul and oversaw the safety and maintenance of local police and U.S. Army vehicles, regularly making sure no bombs had been planted on them. He supervised registrations and gate passes allowing the vehicles to come and go, he said.

Because he helped the Americans, he said, he was badly beaten by the Taliban, who were still operating in Afghanistan during the American occupation. By October 2021, after hiding for weeks following the American evacuation, he fled. 

He endured a two-year odyssey that took him first to neighboring Pakistan, where he applied for a Special Immigrant Visa at the U.S. consulate. That visa was aimed at Afghans such as translators who took the greatest risks by working directly with the Americans and, once approved, would lead quickly to a green card.

Before his came, the man had to flee because Pakistan was forcibly sending Afghans home. 

Brazil was one of the few countries in the world offering temporary humanitarian visas to Afghans, so he applied for and received one, even though he knew no one there, Osman-Elsayed said. He paid for his own flight.

He spent 20 months in Brazil, picking up a job in a low-wage butcher shop hacking apart chickens. But he was lonely, did not speak the language and had no chance of permanent legal residency. Gang violence was rampant and he was afraid of the corrupt police force since he could not communicate in Portuguese. Already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder it got worse, Osman-Elsayed said.

He finally decided to leave for the United States. He thought he would be welcomed here since he had helped American forces in his homeland, he said. Though he had the Special Immigrant Visa application pending, he did not know he had to wait for its approval in Brazil, where he would be issued the visa. Instead, he thought he could receive it in the United States. That mistake derailed his immigration situation, Osman-Elsayed said.

Traversing Latin America on trains, buses, boats and by foot, he finally crossed the U.S. border in San Diego in late 2023. "When I entered the U.S., I didn't have a dollar in my pocket," he said.

Detention at the U.S. border

When he presented himself to a Border Patrol agent, he was deemed to be here illegally since he did not have the visa yet, Osman-Elsayed said. It would be approved six months later. But that was too late.

"He thought that because he worked with the U.S. government, all he had to do was to get to U.S. soil and then they would protect him. And that's not what happened," she said. "Instead of welcoming him, they put him in removal proceedings."

He was detained for one day in San Diego, then released pending court hearings. He soon made his way to Long Island, where an uncle lives. Osman-Elsayed is trying to fix the situation by pursuing his application for asylum, his only path to legal status left despite the visa approval, she said.

Newsday reviewed nearly a dozen official letters, emails and other materials from the U.S. government documenting the man's history and Special Immigrant Visa application and approval. They included an official letter from the chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul verifying his work for the U.S. government and more.

Now, the trepidation he feels is emblematic of the fear and sense of betrayal racing through the Afghan community, who believed they would find refuge here, Osman-Elsayed said.

"Any sense of stability that they once held and trust in the United States government and trust in their belief in democracy is being questioned now," she said.

Long Island is home to an estimated 3,500 people from Afghanistan, according to U.S. Census figures, though there is no breakdown of how many fled because of the Taliban.

The Nassau man needs to appear in immigration court at some point for his asylum case, but fears that with the Trump crackdown his application will be denied and he will be arrested on the spot and deported, Osman-Elsayed said. But if he doesn't show up, he would be ordered removed from the country, and ICE agents could try to track him down anyway.

Vetting Afghans

Trump has said that Afghans brought here under Operation Allies Welcome and Operation Enduring Welcome were not properly vetted by the government under Biden and may pose a security threat. After the shooting, he promised to "make America totally safe again."

"We're not going to put up with these kind of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn't even be in the country," Trump said hours after the attack. "We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden."

The alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, once served in a CIA-backed anti-Taliban paramilitary unit in Afghanistan, authorities said. He allegedly drove across the country from Bellingham, Washington, to carry out the attack. Lakanwal entered the United States in September 2021 as part of Operation Allies Welcome, authorities said, and according to news reports received asylum from the U.S. government in April 2025 during the Trump administration.

Advocates said Trump is blaming an entire nationality for the acts of one troubled individual.

AfghanEvac, a San Diego-based nonprofit, said Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders are among the most thoroughly vetted people in the U.S. immigration system. Before arriving in the United States, most of the Afghans underwent extensive screenings while they waited at U.S. military bases overseas, according to the State Department at the time.

Taking the visa away from them "undermines credibility with wartime partners, erodes trust in the rule of law, and inflicts avoidable harm on thousands of innocent people," group president Shawn VanDiver said in a statement. "This individual’s isolated and violent act should not be used as an excuse to define or diminish an entire community."

Trump on Wednesday put up more obstacles when the State Department announced it was pausing all immigration applications from 75 countries, including Afghanistan, because of worries immigrants may need public assistance in the United States.

Feeling under siege, some Afghans on Long Island have gone into hiding, rarely leave home, and are constantly on the lookout for ICE agents coming to their door, Osman-Elsayed said. Others must go out to work to pay their bills, but are scared doing so, she said.

Seeking a normal life

The man in Nassau County said he worked with U.S. forces in Afghanistan because he believed in their cause of installing democracy and defeating the Taliban terrorists.

"We really appreciated the Americans when they were there," he said. "We saw what freedom can be like and what Afghanistan can become."

He has legal working papers here and a driver’s license, and has worked odd jobs to pay his rent and buy food, mainly driving for Uber and other services. He studies English in a library program.

But now, he said, he rarely leaves home, has practically stopped working, and is almost paralyzed by the Trump crackdown. "My anxiety, my fear has gone through the roof," he said.

"We struggled to get here. We helped the Americans in Afghanistan. We made a bond of togetherness with the American people, thinking that we could be like them and grow our country like them," he said. "What did we do wrong? We just want to make a life for ourselves, to live a better life, to live a normal life without any fear."