The immigration agents took Khadija’s husband on a Thursday morning last month. He was walking their two boys to school in Memphis.
They had his name and photo on a long list of people the previous government had welcomed into the country a few years before. The new government has changed its mind.
Khadija’s husband, Qudratullah, begged the agents not to handcuff him in front of his boys, ages 5 and 9. They did it anyway. They took the Afghan national and his boys to a detention center near the airport.
Then they called Khadija and told her to come to the detention center to pick up their sons. When she arrived, they arrested her and took the entire family to a federal detention center in Dilley, Texas.
Khadija wept. “She is crying and screaming all night, every night,” said Latif Salar, pastor of Christ Community Afghan Church in Memphis and Khadija’s brother-in-law.
Salar, who has a Permanent Resident Card, and his wife, a U.S. citizen, speak on the phone to Khadija and her husband every day. “They were just beginning to recover from the trauma of the Taliban. And now this.”
The Trump administration’s campaigns of mass detention and deportation aren’t entirely focused on noncitizens from Latin America.
In late November, after an Afghan man was identified as the suspected shooter of two National Guard officers in Washington, President Trump halted the processing of all immigration applications (including those for asylum) from Afghan nationals “pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”
He ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to “review” the cases of Afghans who entered the country after the 2021 withdrawal of all U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. “We must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” Trump said November 28th from his resort in Florida.
A week later, Khadija and her family were arrested and detained.
“I’m a very conservative person, but I don’t understand it,” said Darla Richardson, a Baptist missionary who is trying to help Khadija’s family and other Afghan refugees who have been detained in Memphis in recent weeks.
“I want the right people coming into our country, but immigration is not a black-and-white issue. These people were allowed in; they didn’t sneak in.”
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE immediately responded to inquiries from the Institute for Public Service Reporting about the detention of Khadija and her family.
In the summer of 2021, the Biden administration evacuated approximately 80,000 Afghans as U.S. troops were being withdrawn after a decade of war.
“I want to thank these brave Afghans for standing with the United States, and today, I am proud to say to them: ‘Welcome home,’” President Joe Biden said.
Two years later, the administration introduced a “Family Reunification for Afghans” program. It allowed Afghans already here to sponsor their family members to come to the U.S. as refugees. Another 120,000 Afghans were permitted to enter the U.S. on “parole” and were shielded from deportation.
The Trump administration eliminated the shield. “We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden,” Trump said late last month.
Khadija, her husband, and their children came to Memphis in 2023 from Brazil, one of the first nations to offer humanitarian visas for Afghans fleeing the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
After a long and arduous journey from Brazil, the family used the Biden-era CBP One app to book an appointment at a U.S. border crossing to request asylum.
They were given an electronic I-94 travel document that allowed them to enter and work in the U.S. for up to two years while they applied for asylum. Their immigration court hearing was scheduled for December 26th. They were arrested and detained December 4th. Richardson said the family has a new court date for January 26th in Texas, but they are having trouble finding an attorney there.
“They came here out of desperation to escape the Taliban,” said Richardson, a compassion ministry catalyst for the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. “They came here with permission. They were following the rules, but the rules keep changing. Now they are one step from being deported, and we know how the Taliban treats women and Christians.”
Khadija and her family are among dozens of Afghan refugees who came to Memphis after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
Many are Christian converts and ethnic Hazara, one of the largest ethnic minorities in Afghanistan. In the 1990s, all Hazara groups united with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Thousands of Hazara were slaughtered.
In 2021, a girls’ school in a predominantly Hazara area of Kabul was bombed by religious extremists. The blast killed 90 and injured 240. Most of the casualties were girls ages 11 to 15.
“Two years ago, I came to this vast land with a broken heart, a wounded soul, homeless and lost, seeking refuge from the hardships of life,” Jalil Buda, one of the Memphis Afghan refugees, wrote last July on his Facebook page.
“I came from a hell where I still don’t know who is to blame. My body still carries the scent of the blood of those girls and boys whose remains I gathered from the streets and schools. A land that never allowed me to feel even a moment of belonging, where my childhood was riddled with the bullets of violence and humiliation. But America and its noble people — especially the circle of friends I live among — have given my life meaning in this beautiful land. Their kindness and dignity have made me feel the pulse of life again. For America and all my friends here, I wish nothing but the best.”
Jalil, who says he was beaten by the Taliban for reading a Bible, came to Memphis in 2022 with his younger brother, Halil, to join the Afghan church. They both have CBP One visas and I-94 travel documents.
Their parents and three other siblings haven’t been so fortunate. “They all made it to Brazil, but they waited too long to try to come here,” Richardson said. “While they were waiting in Mexico, Donald Trump closed down those programs.”
Richardson said the family was being threatened by Mexican cartels and had nowhere else to go. So, in September, they surrendered to the U.S. Border Patrol and asked for asylum. They were sent to a federal detention center in Laredo, Texas.
The parents and their 7-year-old child were released after 30 days. Richardson and Jalil drove to Laredo to pick them up and bring them back. Jalil’s other brother, Safar, a deaf and mute adult, also was released. But their 21-year-old sister, Sakina, remains in El Valle Detention Facility in Texas. An immigration judge has ordered her to be deported.
“She’s the only one left,” Richardson said. “Why are they doing this? They all are good people. Whatever the current laws and rules say about their legal status, they all are refugees.”
Richardson has spent the past few weeks trying to help Jalil, Khadija, and other Afghan refugees.
She works with Refugee Memphis, a local Christian nonprofit that befriends, serves, and prays for and with refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and other places.
In November, she and Pastor Salar took another Afghan refugee named Ali to the police station in Bartlett to help him pay a ticket for going 10 miles over the speed limit. Ali, a chicken farmer who fled the Taliban, came to Memphis in 2023. The police notified ICE, who arrested Ali and sent him to a federal detention center in Louisiana.
“I didn’t intend to do this kind of work. It’s exhausting. But I know what God has done for me,” Richardson said. “God has called me to share the Good News with all the nations, and God has brought all the nations here.”
On a recent Sunday, Richardson and Salar and all the nations gathered at Second Baptist Church, which once hosted the Afghan congregation.
They sang “Joy to the World” and “What Child Is This?” and other songs to celebrate the season.
They heard Bible passages about the light that darkness cannot overcome and a soul that magnifies the Lord.
They told stories about the peace that passes all understanding and faith in things unseen.
They prayed for Latif and his family, Jalil and his family, Khadija and her family.
They heard good news about Ali, who was released from detention in Louisiana two days before. An immigration judge granted him asylum.
“All of these people need the intercession and care of their brothers and sisters in Christ,” Mark Morris, a longtime missionary and founder of Refugee Memphis, told the assembly.
At the end of the service, before he gave the benediction, Rev. Dr. Stephen Cook invited the congregation to join him in signing a letter being sent to elected officials in Memphis and Washington.
“We call upon you to urgently and favorably consider the serious threats our neighbors are facing” if they are deported, the letter states. “We pray that you will join us in speaking up for and standing with our Afghan neighbors in this time of profound instability and deep fear.”
Cook said the letter isn’t political. It’s biblical. “These people are sisters and brothers in the Body of Christ who are here legally and have done everything they are supposed to do. They may die if they are sent back to the place from which they have fled,” Cook said. “As your pastor, I have to say to you that saying nothing and doing nothing in the face of these realities is not an option.”
David Waters is Distinguished Journalist in Residence and assistant director of the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis.