Reporting snapshot · 1 November 2026 (Asia/Karachi). No flight has been confirmed to have departed, and no government has confirmed the operation: the account below rests on sealed federal court filings in the United States, unnamed officials and two advocacy groups. The main limitation is that no Pakistani official has said whether Islamabad has agreed to take part, what it would require of them, or what would happen to people who reach Pakistani territory.
What the filings show
United States immigration authorities are preparing to fly Afghan detainees out of Louisiana and on to Pakistan, with onward transport to Afghanistan, according to sealed court filings obtained by the Associated Press, which reported that the first removals could begin as early as Monday. The operation has not been announced. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Associated Press on Saturday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not comment on future removal operations, citing operational security and personnel safety.
Two documents do most of the work. In a case filed in federal court in Virginia on Friday, a senior ICE official acknowledged that an Afghan immigrant had been scheduled to be on an upcoming charter flight from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Pakistan “with further transport onward to Afghanistan”; the filing was made in the case of an immigrant who is not in custody and is challenging deportation efforts. In a separate case in Oklahoma, federal prosecutors disclosed on Monday that another Afghan immigrant was scheduled to be deported to Afghanistan at some point next week.
The New York Times reported on Friday, on information from three unnamed US officials, that more than 150 Afghan immigrants are expected to be deported in the current push and that the first flight could leave as soon as Monday, Agence France-Presse reported. Those officials said the United States cannot arrange removals directly to Afghanistan, because Washington has no formal relations with the Taliban government, and that Pakistan would oversee the expulsion onwards. The Associated Press reported that the plan to send Afghans to Pakistan was first reported by Bloomberg on Monday, and that the New York Times reported on Friday that the immigrants would then be sent to Afghanistan after reaching Pakistan.
Human Rights First, which tracks US deportation flights, said on Saturday that it had confirmed a scheduled flight from Louisiana to Pakistan on Tuesday carrying Afghan immigrants. Its director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights, Savitri Arvey, described the move as “beyond egregious” and said it followed earlier removals the group had tracked: Iranian Christian converts and political dissidents removed via Qatar and Kuwait to Iran, and a Russian political dissident removed via Egypt to Russia.
Afghan and refugee advocates say the risk is not theoretical. Shawn VanDiver, president of the advocacy group #AfghanEvac, said the administration was preparing the flight while attention focused on the US midterm elections, “hoping no one is watching”. “America is about to put Afghans on a plane to the Taliban,” he said, adding that some of those facing removal are “the brothers and sons of men who served alongside US forces, families the Taliban already has every reason to target.”
Why the route runs through Pakistan
The mechanism is an established one. The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration has deported thousands of immigrants to countries other than their own, using third-country removals where Washington cannot send people home because it has no formal relations with the government there, and in some cases as a deterrent. It noted that US immigration judges have often determined that a person’s life would be in jeopardy if returned, and that it was not immediately clear whether any of those designated for return to Afghanistan hold protective orders.
The wider Afghan file explains why there are people to remove. Trump issued travel bans for a number of countries, including Afghanistan, and sought to end deportation protections for Afghans, some of whom had been granted special immigrant visas after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, AFP reported. On entering his second term he paused the Afghan resettlement programme built under his predecessor, and the Associated Press reported that thousands of people who had spent years in vetting remain stranded, including at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, a camp housing more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted the US war effort or are relatives of US service members. The administration’s September reprieve extended the camp’s life by nine months beyond its 30 September deadline, and earlier in the year it considered transferring some residents to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan Today reported.
For Islamabad, the question is what the plan implies. AfghanEvac said the government “won’t say where these flights land, because it knows what happens to the people on them when they do”, as Pakistan Today reported. Pakistan already runs a repatriation campaign of its own: the government ordered law enforcement nationwide to arrest Afghan citizens without visas earlier this year, part of a years-long policy that has pushed back millions of Afghans who fled after the Taliban returned to power, AFP reported.
The diplomatic line is not new either. Islamabad has said that terrorism from Afghan soil is a red line and that it reserves the right to act, as KhabarWire reported on 1 November, and Washington has publicly backed Pakistan’s right to defend itself against attacks launched from Afghan territory, KhabarWire reported in July. The arrangement now being described runs through Pakistani territory, and neither government has set out what it is.
What is still uncertain
No flight has been confirmed to have left, and the dates in circulation differ: the Associated Press described removals starting as early as Monday, and Human Rights First says it confirmed a flight on Tuesday. The number — more than 150 — rests on unnamed officials, and no published list of detainees exists. The Virginia and Oklahoma filings show only that individuals were scheduled; they do not establish how many people are on a manifest, or whether the flights carry anyone other than the two named in court.
On the Pakistani side the record is thinner than the American one. Officials at the Pakistani embassy in Washington did not respond to Associated Press emails, and no statement from Islamabad has been published. The account of what happens on arrival comes from US officials who spoke to the New York Times, who said Pakistan would oversee the onward expulsion, and from advocacy groups. Nothing published says whether Pakistan agreed to receive the detainees, whether the Afghan government would be notified, or what mechanism would move people from a Pakistani airport towards the Afghan border.
There is also no answer yet to what happens to people who reach Pakistan. The Taliban announced a general amnesty for Afghans who worked with Western-backed forces after retaking power, while the United Nations has recorded reports of extrajudicial killings, detentions and abuses, AFP reported. Taliban authorities were not immediately available for comment on the deportation plan, and the US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from Agence France-Presse.
The size of the backlog behind this flight is also unsettled. The Associated Press reported that it was not immediately clear whether any of those designated for return hold protective orders, and the camp in Qatar still houses more than 1,000 Afghans with no final date for their removal. KhabarWire’s Pakistan–Afghanistan hub follows the wider Kabul–Islamabad file this operation sits inside.
