“It’s like the United States doesn’t really understand what I’ve done for this country, it’s treason,” Abdullah told the BBC.
He fled Afghanistan with his parents amid the US withdrawal in August 2021 and is now a US Army paratrooper. She worries she can’t help both her sister and her husband escape because of President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending the resettlement program.
The order cancels all flights and requests for Afghan refugees, with no exception for families of active duty military members.
Trump claims the decision is about “record levels of migration” that threaten “resource availability for Americans.”
But Abdullah and several other Afghan refugees told the BBC they felt the US had “turned its back” on them, despite years of working alongside US officials, troops and non-profit organizations in Afghanistan. We are not using their real names because they worry it could jeopardize their cases or put their families at risk.
As soon as Abdullah heard about the order, he called his sister. “She cried, she lost all hope,” he said. She believes her work made her a target for the Taliban government that took over in 2021.
“The anxiety, it’s just unimaginable. She thinks we’ll never see each other again,” he says.
During the war, Abdullah says he was a translator for American forces. When he left Afghanistan, his sister and her husband could not get their passports in time to board the flight.
Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban government, told the BBC that there was an amnesty for anyone who worked with international forces and that all Afghans could “live in the country without any fear”. He claims that these refugees are “economic migrants”.
But a 2023 UN report cast doubt on the Taliban government’s assurances. Hundreds of former government officials and members of the armed forces were found to have been allegedly killed despite the general amnesty.
Abdullah’s sister and her husband have completed the medical examinations and interviews necessary to move to the US. The BBC has seen a US Department of Defense document supporting their claim.
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 affects his work in his combat unit, 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 the promise they made 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 US Air Force lieutenant colonel supporting his asylum claim. The affidavit added that he provided advice on attacks targeting militants linked to the Taliban and the Islamic State group.
Babak cannot understand the president’s decision, given that he worked alongside American troops. “We risked our lives for those missions. Now we are in serious danger,” he says.
He moved his wife and young son from place to place, desperately trying to stay hidden. He claims that his brother was tortured because of where he was. The BBC cannot verify this part of his story, given the nature of his claims.
Babak is appealing to Trump and his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, to change their minds.
“Mike Waltz, you served in Afghanistan. Encourage the president,” he tells us.
Before saying goodbye, he adds, “One ray of light that we held has gone out.”
Ahmad managed to fly to the US amid the chaos of the retreat, but is now separated from his family. He felt he had no choice but to leave his 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 targeted by the Taliban government. “I can’t sleep knowing that I am one of the reasons why they are in this situation,” he adds.
Before the Taliban took over, Ahmad worked for a non-profit organization called the Open Government Partnership (OGP), co-founded by the US 13 years ago and based in Washington. He says that the work he is most proud of is the establishment of a special court that will deal with the abuse of women.
But he claims that his work in the OGP and his advocacy for women made him a target and that he was killed by Taliban fighters in 2021 before the Taliban took over the country.
The BBC has seen a letter from a Pennsylvania hospital assessing “evidence of bullet injuries and bullet fragments” which they say is “consistent with his description of what happened to him in Kabul”.
To make matters worse, he says his family is also in danger because his father was a colonel in the Afghan army and helped the CIA. The BBC has seen a certificate issued by the Afghan National Security Forces thanking his father for his service.
Ahmad says his parents, siblings were mistreated by the Taliban government, so they fled to Pakistan. The BBC has seen photographs showing Ahmad’s father and brother being treated in hospital for injuries he claims were inflicted by people in the Taliban government.
His family completed several steps of the resettlement program. He says he even provided evidence that he has enough funds to support his family once they arrive in the US, without any government assistance.
Now Ahmad says the situation is critical. His family is in Pakistan on visas that will expire in a few months. He contacted the IOM and was told to “be patient”.
The head of #AfghanEvac, a nonprofit group that helps eligible Afghan refugees resettle, said he estimates 10,000 to 15,000 people are in the late stages of applying.
Mina, who is pregnant, has been waiting for a flight from Islamabad for six months. She worries that her terror will endanger her unborn child. “If I lose my child, I will kill myself,” she told the BBC.
She says she protested for women’s rights, even after the Taliban government took control of Afghanistan. She claims she was arrested in 2023 and held overnight.
“Even then I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan. I hid after the release, but they called me and said that they would kill me next time,” she says.
Mina worries 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 during decades of instability in the region. According to the UN refugee agency, the country hosts three million Afghan nationals, of whom around 1.4 million are documented.
As cross-border tensions with the Taliban government have flared, concerns are growing over the fate of Afghans in Pakistan, with reports of alleged intimidation and detention. The UN special rapporteur said he was concerned and that Afghans in the region deserved better treatment.
Pakistan’s government says it is deporting foreign nationals who are in the country illegally back to Afghanistan and confirmed the searches were carried out in January.
According to the IOM, more than 795,000 Afghans have been expelled from Pakistan since last September.
The Afghan refugees we spoke to feel caught between a homeland where their lives are in danger and a host country whose patience is running out.
They placed their hopes in the US – but what seemed like a safe harbor was abruptly blocked by the new president until further notice.
