US prepares first deportation flight of Afghans to Pakistan, possibly on Monday, as advocates warn they could be sent to the Taliban

The United States is preparing to deport Afghan immigrants and asylum-seekers to Pakistan on the first flight of its kind, a senior Trump administration official said, and rights advocates and detainees' families say it could leave as early as Monday, November 2. The flight has not been announced. Critics warn that the passengers could quickly be moved on to Afghanistan, where the Taliban are in power.

Neither government has confirmed the plan. Homeland Security said it could not confirm removal operations for security reasons. The State Department said it had nothing to announce. Pakistan's foreign ministry and its embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Numbers nobody agrees on

The size of the group is unclear, and each figure comes from a different source.

Source	Number of Afghans
Senior administration official	Dozens on the flight
Other reports on the plan	More than 150
AfghanEvac (advocacy group)	At least 80 moved to Louisiana in recent days, from 34 other ICE facilities; 19 without lawyers
AfghanEvac's president, Shawn VanDiver	Possibly hundreds now held at the Louisiana centre
Senator Jeanne Shaheen	Hundreds, including women and children

The Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena has served as a hub before deportations. A federal court filing reportedly describes a charter from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Pakistan "with further transport onward to Afghanistan."

Who is on the list

The official said the group could include people with deportation orders, those refused asylum, and those whose temporary protected status was ended by the administration. Many crossed from Mexico and then asked for asylum, and some of those cases are still open, VanDiver said. Advocates say relatives of Afghans who worked with the US military during the 20-year war are among them.

One US citizen said her Afghan husband, whose asylum claim has been pending for nine years, was moved from Pennsylvania to Louisiana this month and told he would be deported in early November. He has not been to Afghanistan since 2016, and she said he has begun growing his beard to meet Taliban rules for men.

Pakistan's silent part in the plan

The US has no diplomatic relations with the Taliban, which is why Pakistan matters. The senior official said a US charter could not land there without the knowledge and approval of Pakistan's government. It is unclear what kind of agreement exists, if any.

The timing is awkward for Islamabad. Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghans for decades, but since 2023 it has run a sweeping campaign that has pressured hundreds of thousands to leave and forcibly deported others. This weekend its information ministry publicly attacked the Afghan Taliban over cross-border militancy. Taking deportees from America and passing them over that same border would raise questions at home about who pays, who holds them and for how long.

Advocates are blunt about what they expect. VanDiver says the design is for Pakistan to complete the removal, and that anyone flown back from the United States would be treated with suspicion by the Taliban, whether or not they ever worked with US forces.

How Washington and its critics are responding

The senior official summed up the administration's view with a remark likely to be quoted widely: these people have no status in the US, "therefore we don't really care what happens to them." A State Department spokesperson said all countries must be able to manage their borders and immigration processes.

Democrats, Shaheen among them, condemned the plan, and she called it "reprehensible." AfghanEvac says the administration is choosing a moment when attention is on the November 3 midterm elections.

The flight would also fit a wider pattern. The administration has already sent thousands of people to countries that are not their own. Lawyers argue this is a way around laws against returning asylum-seekers to the places they fled, and the US Supreme Court is due to consider the legality of these third-country deals this term.

What to watch on Monday

The first sign will be whether a charter leaves Louisiana on Monday, and whether any court steps in first. In Pakistan, the question is what the foreign ministry says when it finally addresses the matter, and whether those who land are kept in the country or taken to the border.