The Department of Homeland Security announced on May 12 that it would end TPS for Afghans. Starting July 14, Afghans living in the U.S. with TPS will become undocumented immigrants, putting them at risk of deportation. Nationwide, as many as 12,000 Afghans will lose TPS and be at risk of deportation, but the U.S. hasn't reported any state-level numbers, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a refugee resettlement agency.
The U.S. military occupied Afghanistan for two decades to remove the Taliban, an Islamic militant group that controlled the Central Asian country in the 2000s. During the chaotic withdrawal in 2021, many Afghans sought refuge or asylum in the U.S. out of fear of living under the Taliban, which brought back strict societal rules, particularly against women, and violent enforcement when the American military left. About 200,000 Afghans came into the U.S. with permission from either a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) or TPS.
Afghans with an SIV had secured their visa by working with the military or government agencies like USAID. The rest entered the U.S. through humanitarian parole, which is meant to allow immigrants for urgent reasons, with the Biden administration granting them TPS in March 2022 as long as they entered the country by September 2023.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a May 12 memo that the Trump administration will take away TPS for Afghans because "Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country."
Homayoon Milad, an Afghan refugee with an SIV, works with the IRC to help refugees adjust to life in the Denver area. He he says that the Trump administration's sense of the situation in Afghanistan is wrong. According to Milad, Afghanistan is dealing with an "alarming" poverty rate, women have lost the right to education and employment opportunities, and the Taliban is still heavily persecuting people.
"The de facto regime in Afghanistan right now is arresting, persecuting, torturing people because of their affiliation to certain parties, religious opinions, as well as their affiliation with the former government," Milad says "They're literally doing that everyday."
About 3,000 Afghans came to Colorado after the August 2021 withdrawal, according to the Rose Community Foundation, a local faith-based charity. Milad estimates that about one in six Afghans he meets through work are TPS holders, and about 11 percent of Afghans who came to the U.S. after the withdrawal have TPS.
While the population of Afghan TPS holders seems small, Milad notes that they aren't the only immigrants who rely on the status. The National Immigration Forum (NIF), an immigrant advocacy group, estimates upwards of 7,000 TPS holders from sixteen different countries were living in Colorado as of 2024.
According to the Denver mayor's office, about 13,000 Venezuelans who arrived in Denver between December 2022 and August 2023 were eligible for TPS, but not all of them applied for it despite their eligibility and many left Colorado.
Since the start of May, Trump has rescinded TPS for people coming from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Haiti, Cameroon, Nicaragua and Cuba. According to the NIF, this will put nearly 900,000 immigrants at risk of deportation nationwide, including more than 500,000 from Haiti and 300,000 from Venezuela. On Monday, May 19, the Supreme Court sided with Trump and ruled that he has the power to revoke TPS for Venezuelans despite an ongoing humanitarian crisis in their country.
According to the Denver mayor's office, about 13,000 Venezuelans who arrived in Denver between December 2022 and August 2023 were eligible for TPS, but not all of them applied for it despite their eligibility and many left Colorado.
Since the start of May, Trump has rescinded TPS for people coming from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Haiti, Cameroon, Nicaragua and Cuba. According to the NIF, this will put nearly 900,000 immigrants at risk of deportation nationwide, including more than 500,000 from Haiti and 300,000 from Venezuela. On Monday, May 19, the Supreme Court sided with Trump and ruled that he has the power to revoke TPS for Venezuelans despite an ongoing humanitarian crisis in their country.
Stuck in the U.S. with No Way to Work
Deportation back to Afghanistan "would be a humanitarian crisis," Milad says. However, among the Afghan TPS holders he sees everyday, "they don't seem concerned" about deportation, because they don't really know what will happen yet. "Everybody is just watching. Families are watching. Individuals are watching."
Advocacy groups and politicians are concerned, however. In a May 13 statement, the IRC said that removing TPS for Afghans "harms not only those relying on TPS for safety and protection, but also the communities that benefit from their contributions." The International Christian Concern, a faith-based human rights group, says that rescinding TPS "endangers lives" because the Taliban persecute Christians.
Congressman Jason Crow, a Democrat representing Aurora, is spearheading a bill to create an additional 20,000 SIV openings for Afghans to protect them from deportation.
"I served in Afghanistan. I might not be here today were it not for our Afghan partners who served alongside me during the war," Crow said in May. "Many Afghans now face deadly persecution by the Taliban."
Without TPS, Afghan immigrants could lose their work authorization unless they have another legal status. According to Milad, those in Denver worry that they're more likely to lose their jobs than be deported.
"The people who arrived in 2021, they have almost all been integrated into the community and adapted. They built their businesses or they're just in any form of the workforce," Milad says. "So the concerns come from more of this perspective: whenever TPS is ending, the work authorization is also ending."
According to the NIF, the Trump administration's immigration policies will strip more than 2 million immigrants of work authorization. This includes federal orders to revoke student visas, stopping refugee resettlement, ending humanitarian parole and TPS for some immigrants, and shutting down CBP One, an app that streamlined the humanitarian parole process.
According to the NIF, the Trump administration's immigration policies will strip more than 2 million immigrants of work authorization. This includes federal orders to revoke student visas, stopping refugee resettlement, ending humanitarian parole and TPS for some immigrants, and shutting down CBP One, an app that streamlined the humanitarian parole process.
Milad says many in Denver's Afghan community are seeking asylum, a legal status for people fleeing persecution but who are already in the U.S. It's similar to refugee status, which is only for people applying from outside the U.S.
Immigrants can have TPS and asylum at the same time, and once TPS lapses, they'll still have asylum, which should legally protect them from deportation and give them permission to work, according to the NIF. Last year, the City of Denver helped hundreds of Venezuelans apply for asylum, which requires a five-month wait before a work permit is issued. Milad says that most of the TPS holders he knows have already applied for asylum and feel confident they'll get it or find another legal pathway to stay in the U.S.
"With whomever I talk, they're confident that they'll get their asylum," Milad says. "They realize that they should be looking for legal support. ...They're confident that one way or another, they can stay in the country legally."
Trump's Broad, Shameless Attack on Immigration
The Trump administration's attacks on immigration into the U.S. quickly became broad and callous. An entire family, including a small child, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a Denver court on Thursday, May 29, despite a judge delaying their deportation orders just moments before. Immigrant activist Jeanette Vizguerra was arrested outside her workplace in March despite her national profile.Trump's crackdown on immigration is nationwide. When Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, was wrongfully detained and sent to El Salvador in March, it caused national outrage over what was seen as illegal deportation because he had permission to stay in the country. In April, Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested for hiding an immigrant from ICE in her jury room, according to federal authorities, but video of Dugan's actions that day have been used to defend her from wrongdoing.
Three large ICE raids have hit different parts of Colorado, with reports of ICE agents throwing flash and smoke grenades as they burst into people's homes and detained immigrants who showed their asylum paperwork. Upwards of 1,400 immigrants are imprisoned in the ICE detention center in Aurora, according to Congressman Jason Crow.
Refugee admissions in the U.S. stopped in February and have not yet fully resumed due to an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office. The same order forced the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN) to stop offering free legal aid at detention centers and courts; in late February, RMIAN was able to resume its free legal services for children. Nonprofits that helped immigrants during the past two years are losing millions in federal funding, and despite an increased demand in services for immigrants, they expect to lose more in the coming years.
Milad says that for now, the Afghans in Denver are trying to support themselves. What they need for other communities, he says, is help flipping the narrative that Afghanistan is safe enough for their return.
"Afghans need advocacy and more support," Milad says. "The situation is not ideal for the people to return back to Afghanistan."
