A U.S. Judge Barred Deporting a Young Afghan Man to Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan, Where His Family Was Already Being Threatened Because His Brothers Had Helped the American Military — One Served in the Afghan Army, Another Was a U.S.-Trained Pilot the Taliban Killed — So the Trump Administration Deported Him to the Central African Republic Instead
The United States made a promise to the Afghans who risked their lives helping its military: that it would not abandon them to the Taliban. In late August 2026, the Trump administration broke that promise in a way designed to slip past a court. According to the Associated Press, the U.S. deported dozens of people to the Central African Republic — among them an Afghan man in his early twenties whose brothers had aided the American war effort. One brother served in the Afghan National Army that fought alongside U.S. forces; another was a pilot trained by the United States and was killed by the Taliban. Because of that work, the family in Afghanistan had received Taliban threats. A U.S. judge, recognizing the danger, had granted the young man protection against being deported to Afghanistan. So the administration did not send him to Afghanistan — it sent him to the Central African Republic, a country wracked by instability to which he has no connection, using a third-country deportation to achieve the removal the court had blocked in all but name. It is two failures at once: the betrayal of a family that bled for the United States, and the circumvention of a judge's order meant to keep a person alive. This is not an isolated case. The administration has effectively ended the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program and put roughly 11,000 Afghans on Temporary Protected Status at risk of removal — a systematic abandonment of America's wartime allies.