Flickers of Hope for Afghans Caught in Legal Limbo
In late July, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) made headway in its Pacito v. Trump lawsuit, which challenged President Donald Trump’s January 20 executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP). U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead denied the government’s motion to dismiss and ruled that IRAP may create a class-action suit to allow all parties to “seek…broad relief from government policies.”
IRAP litigation fellow Megan Hauptman said that this decision does not “alter the scope of the preliminary injunction currently in place,” meaning that at present, the government is only required “to process cases of refugees who had travel booked on or before January 20, 2025.”Â
However, Hauptman also said that “recent court decisions allow the litigation to move forward on behalf of all refugees harmed by the unlawful refugee ban.” An IRAP press release names the suit’s three subclasses as all USRAP applicants awaiting processing, any Afghan or Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) recipients who did not receive resettlement support following a January 24 stop work order, and refugees awaiting the resettlement of family members through the follow-to-join program.
The news may provide hope to Afghan refugees facing deportation in Pakistan and uncertainty at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar. Stateside, however, Afghans who have lost parole or status continue to await an unknown fate.
Currently, parole has been revoked for a portion of the 8,100 Afghans who entered the U.S. through the southern border using the Customs and Border Protection’s now defunct One app, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was revoked from around 11,700 Afghans in July. Additionally, Afghans who arrived in the U.S. during Operation Allies Refuge in August 2021 were granted two years of humanitarian parole. Their parole was extended in 2023 but is soon set to expire, which will leave an unknown number of parolees in precarious legal standing.
Jill Marie Bussey, director for legal affairs at Global Refuge, told me that Afghans with TPS began receiving notices of termination in early August. For those with
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