An Afghan man who fled to the United States after he says his brother was murdered by the Taliban in retaliation for working with the U.S. military, something the man also did himself, is now sitting in an immigration detention center in California. Federal agents arrested him after the conclusion of an asylum case hearing.
The arrest, which was captured on video circulated on social media, is the most stark demonstration yet that the Afghan allies who were instrumental to the 20-year U.S. war effort are not being spared from the Trump administration's aggressive tactics to reduce immigration.
It is also infuriating veterans who have spent the years since the withdrawal working to ensure Afghans threatened by the Taliban because of their association with the U.S. military can get to safety.
"People are apoplectic," said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran and founder of #AfghanEvac, which helps relocate Afghan allies. "A lot of veterans have given up their entire lives -- myself included -- we've given up for our entire lives over the past almost four years to try to unf--- what government couldn't figure out. And we were succeeding really, really well. Until this administration came in."
Afghans have been caught in Trump's anti-immigration policies since his first day in office in January, but some veterans, including VanDiver, had previously held out hope the effects on Afghans were unintentional given Trump's campaign rhetoric, which was heavily critical of the Afghanistan withdrawal.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee admissions, stranding hundreds of Afghans who were already approved to come to the United States. Days later, a freeze in foreign aid threw the visa program specifically for Afghans who worked for the U.S. military into limbo.
Since then, the Trump administration has moved to shutter the office in charge of resettling Afghans as part of a larger State Department reorganization, included Afghanistan on a list of 12 countries from which it is banning most travel, ended a legal protection for Afghans in the U.S. known as temporary protected status, and sent notices to those with another legal protection known as humanitarian parole telling them their parole was over and they needed to self-deport.
The Afghan man detained last week is one of those who received the self-deportation email, said his lawyer, Brian McGoldrick.
Sayed Naser, whose last name is being withheld at the request of his legal team for his protection, worked as a translator for the U.S. military from 2011 to 2013 before he and his two brothers founded a transportation and freight company that contracted with the military from 2014 to 2021, according to paperwork provided by his legal team.
"While collaborating with U.S. forces, I faced numerous threats and attacks," Sayed wrote in a declaration as part of his application for asylum in the U.S. "Several times, I narrowly escaped harm, but over seven of our vehicles were burned by the Taliban. To them, anyone or any company working with foreign forces is considered an infidel and a legitimate target for killing."
After the U.S. military withdrew in 2021 and the Taliban returned to power, Sayed went into hiding within Afghanistan, relocating monthly, as the Taliban hunted for him, he wrote in the declaration. He also applied for a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, the visa program specifically for Afghans who worked with the U.S. military during the war.
In 2023, the Taliban stormed a family wedding, he wrote.
"I received a call from my wife informing me that the Taliban had entered the wedding venue searching for me," he wrote. "She told me that they shot and killed my brother, Sayed Mohammed, and took my father. She warned me to stay away from home."
After that, Sayed fled to Iran, where he lived for six months before receiving a humanitarian visa for Brazil. Once in Brazil, he made the journey, by bus and by foot, north to Mexico, where he applied for asylum in the United States through a Biden administration-era program called CBP One. He stayed in Mexico until he was granted humanitarian parole to enter the U.S. while his asylum case was pending.
He legally entered the United States through the San Ysidro Port of Entry in California in July 2024, McGoldrick said.
Sayed was given a notice to appear in court for what essentially amounted to a status conference for his asylum claim, an order he was following when he was detained by immigration agents June 12, McGoldrick said.
"It's really shocking what's happening in the courthouse in San Diego and around the country," McGoldrick told reporters during a virtual briefing this week. "You walk down the hall, and it's like you're walking down executioner's row. There's all of these armed personnel. They're eyeballing everybody as we come down, and they're just watching you, and it's just so intimidating. And the clients are terrorized. It was terrorizing to me the first couple times I saw it, and I'm a citizen."
In an emailed statement, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Sayed's arrest. The statement also denied that his immigration record included indications he worked with the U.S. government in any capacity, but the paperwork provided by his legal team includes documents confirming his contracts with the military.
Trump, who ran on campaign promises to crack down on immigration and remove those without legal status under the banner "mass deportations now," has unleashed a wave of military-style raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at places ranging from farms to restaurants to swap meets.
ICE agents, often masked and in plain clothes, have also been staking out courthouses and detaining migrants after they appear for routine hearings in their asylum cases.
It's unclear how many Afghans have been arrested at courthouses or in other immigration raids since the start of the Trump administration or how many of those detained had pending asylum or SIV applications. While the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Sayed's arrest, it did not answer a half dozen questions from Military.com about the case, including how many other Afghans have been detained since January.
VanDiver, of #AfghanEvac, said it's likely other Afghans have been detained, but Sayed is the first whose arrest was captured on video.
In the video, two men wearing badges around their necks and jackets that say "Police ICE" approach Sayed and McGoldrick asking for documentation of who Sayed is. The agents' faces are mostly covered by neck gaiters that are pulled up to above their noses. After McGoldrick declines to give them any documentation, one of the officers says, "That's him," and they detain Sayed.
"I worked with the U.S. military. Just tell it to the world," Sayed says to the camera as the ICE agents put handcuffs on him.
As the agents walk Sayed down the hall, McGoldrick asks to see a warrant, but the ICE agents decline to provide it immediately. McGoldrick told reporters he was eventually shown a warrant about 15 minutes later.
The video was filmed by people McGoldrick described as volunteers who have been coming to the courthouse in recent weeks to document ICE arrests.
In most cases where asylum seekers are being detained at courthouses, the arrests happen right after an immigration judge has dismissed the case at the request of the federal government. Dismissing the case allows the government to then fast-track that person's deportation.
In Sayed's case, too, the government moved to dismiss his case. But the judge did not grant the motion, McGoldrick said. Instead, the judge ordered McGoldrick to file a brief in opposition to the dismissal in 10 days and scheduled a hearing on the merits of Sayed's asylum claim for September.
The government's argument for dismissal in Sayed's case was that his notice to appear in court was "improvidently issued," but the government did not explain what was improper about it, McGoldrick said.
Because the case hasn't been dismissed yet, Sayed is not yet in an expedited removal status, McGoldrick said. But, the lawyer added, Sayed has already asked the ICE agents for a credible fear interview, which migrants slated for expedited removal are entitled to to determine whether they might be eligible for asylum.
"He was very happy to find out that the whole social media thing was blowing up," McGoldrick said of Sayed, whom he visited at ICE's Otay Mesa Detention Center in California on Sunday. "It was kind of emotional for me when he said, 'You know, I never knew that in America I'd be put in a room where I have to sleep in the same room where I go to the bathroom.' He's really, really disappointed about how he's being treated, as you can imagine. He was expecting a lot more."
A third brother who worked with Sayed and the murdered brother was granted asylum in the United States earlier this year. Sayed's wife and their two children are in hiding in a foreign country, McGoldrick said.
Sayed's case has attracted some attention in Congress.
"This is unacceptable," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats posted on social media this week. "Our war effort relied on Afghans like this individual to stand up to the Taliban in support of our troops and diplomats. To abandon them now, once they have finally found safety in the United States, is simply unconscionable."
Trump, who set the U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan in motion with a deal with the Taliban in 2020, made criticism of the Biden administration's messy end to the withdrawal a centerpiece of his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump brought family members of service members killed during the chaotic evacuation of U.S. troops out to endorse him during the Republican National Convention, and he visited Arlington National Cemetery around the third anniversary of the withdrawal in an episode that became engulfed in controversy when he posed for pictures in an area of the cemetery that bans political campaigning.
"Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world," Trump said last year during a speech to the National Guard Association.
Asked how arresting Sayed comports with Trump's campaign rhetoric on Afghanistan, the White House referred Military.com to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
"When taken in totality -- we have to look at what President Trump was saying on the campaign trail and during the withdrawal -- and we're only left to believe that he treats Afghans and veterans like, like political pawns," #AfghanEvac's VanDiver said. "Because as soon as he's had an opportunity to do right by these folks, he shut down parole, he shut down TPS, he shut down Enduring Welcome, he shut down refugees, he shut down family reunifications. ... They disrupted the system that was working, and there's no good reason for it."
