The Department of Homeland Security announced the end of Temporary Protected Status for Afghans in May, assessing that “improved security,” a “stabilizing economy,” and increased tourism demonstrated Afghans could safely return to their homeland.
Hours after TPS was removed for about 11,700 Afghans on July 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit blocked the cancellation. The deadline for TPS revocation is now extended to July 21 while the U.S. government and CASA, which sued the government over TPS, file briefs arguing their positions.
Amid this pause, experts continue to argue that Afghanistan lacks economic stability and that conditions will be exacerbated given the deportation of more than 1.6 million Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan in 2025.
In April, the Taliban announced layoffs for about 20% of its public sector workforce, citing the need to “improve performance and reduce administrative bloat.” Amu TV noted that the timing of cuts “coincided with the cessation of U.S. assistance and a sharp decline in humanitarian funding from international partners.”
In May, Zan Times reported that some staff had cut salaries and could not “consistently earn enough … to afford a sack of flour, a container of oil, a few kilos of rice, or some beans.”
In the midst of tightening purse strings, Iran has deported around 800,000 Afghans since March, with over 508,000 returned following its brief war with Israel. At least 13 Afghan bodies have been deposited at the Iran-Afghanistan border in recent weeks, likely due to heat and poor traveling conditions.
The return is difficult for unaccompanied women, given that the Taliban do not allow women to travel without a mahram, a male family member. Though the Taliban say they are assisting single women, the Guardian reports that “many returnees say they received no such help.”
Pakistan deported around 200,000 Afghans between April and mid-June, with Najib Ghiasi of the charity Aseel reportedly witnessing 5,000 migrants per day deported through the Torkham border in late June.
Australian David Collier traveled to Afghanistan in late April. In addition to witnessing Afghanistan’s incredible poverty, he told me that he witnessed Pakistani officials at the Torkham gate “whipping” refugees as they were shuttled back into their homeland.
At least three Afghan prosecutors with referrals to the now-suspended U.S. Refugee Admissions Program who awaited processing in Pakistan have been deported into the hands of the Taliban.
Multiple Afghan allies in the USRAP pipeline told me that they fear for their lives if returned to their homeland. One woman, who previously advocated publicly for girls’ education in the conservative, Taliban-heavy province of Kandahar, told me that her “current situation in Pakistan has become dire,” as returning “would put my life, and potentially my family’s, in extreme and immediate danger.”
A reporter who faces retaliation for his anti-Taliban media coverage told me that poverty “has taken a devastating toll” on his family in Pakistan. “Often I break down in tears seeing my children go to bed hungry,” he explained. Since the suspension of the USRAP, he says that an application for Reporters Without Borders represents his family’s “last hope of escaping a life of persecution and despair.”
Though the Taliban Director of Information and Culture in Herat told the AP that the Taliban are building “residential townships … in every province” for returnees, deported Afghans who oppose the Taliban will surely be at risk.
Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Taliban Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani. The ICC said that the leaders committed “the crime against humanity of persecution … on gender grounds against girls, women and other persons.”
The ICC also found that the Taliban’s policies “resulted in severe violations of fundamental rights and freedoms of the civilian population of Afghanistan, in connection with conduct of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearance.”
While the future of TPS is debated, another crisis looms for Afghans: the impending loss of humanitarian parole for Afghans who arrived in the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of our withdrawal. Parole, issued for two-year periods, was renewed in the summer of 2023. Without a further renewal, thousands of allies face loss of status and work authorization.
Daniel Salazar, a refugee and protection policy adviser at Global Refuge, told me that “the termination of TPS and the end of parole is a devastating one-two punch for this community, occurring weeks apart or potentially at the same time depending on the TPS court case.”
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Those with TPS and humanitarian parole “have lived for years in immigration limbo. These actions are pushing this population into something far worse than purgatory,” Salazar lamented.
He said that his organization remains “deeply worried about what happens after these temporary protections like TPS and parole lapse.”
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into nearly two decades of war and the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.