Deportation or suicide: The unfathomable choice facing some Iowa Afghan families

Refugees brought here legally after U.S.-Afghanistan war ended are now told to leave by May 20

Courtesy of KCCI News footage

As a substitute teacher in suburban Des Moines high schools, Miriam Woods has a long view of her students’ interests, growth spurts, and shifting emotional and physical tides. If she knows something difficult is preoccupying a kid in class, she’ll remember to check back next time they’re together to see if help is needed.

But some sources of trauma, as Woods saw last week, are beyond the power of a temporary teacher - or counselor or school district or even the state – to mitigate. They can emanate from the very top of U.S. government.

Last week, several Afghan students who’d been relocated to Iowa as refugees after the 2021 U.S. troop withdrawal from their homeland told her about letters their parents had received from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Dated April 10, the letters ordered their families to leave the U.S. by May 20 or face deportation.

One girl fell into Woods’ arms sobbing, and described the stress her family is under -- everyone in tears, unable to sleep at night. The girl told Woods her grades had plummeted from A’s to nearly failing in that time.

These families have been here legally for two or more years on what’s called Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which covers some 9,000 Afghans in the U.S. Many America’s Afghans helped us fight the brutal, repressive Taliban forces which have since retaken control with the U.S. withdrawal. A TPS status is supposed to protect people from being sent back to countries facing conflict or natural disasters. It carries permission to work in the U.S.

But DHS officials have decided to end the Afghans’ TPS status because in Noem’s opinion, an agency spokeswoman said, Afghanistan is in “much better ” condition now.

Don’t try telling that to Shir Agha Safi, executive director of the nonprofit Afghan Partners in Iowa, who told KCCI News, "It's totally not safe.” He describes a place where those in control are “hanging people and still killing (members of) former forces left behind."

Or ask Amnesty International. Its most recent report describes a country where women and girls lack freedom of movement and of expression and are barred from attending school past sixth grade. It reports arbitrary arrests, forcible disappearances, torture and “extrajudicial executions of former government employees, human rights defenders, journalists and other voices.”

The Biden administration extended Afghans’ TPS status in 2023. But under Trump’s administration, concerns for the refugees appear to have evaporated. In fact, from the tone of Noem’s letter, you might think they were scofflaws trying to take advantage of the U.S.

Devoid of pleasantries or greetings, the form letter sent out to thousands began, “It is time for you to leave the United States. You are currently here because the Department of Homeland Security paroled you into the United States for a limited period... DHS is now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole immediately.”

“Do not attempt to remain in the United States,” it admonished. “The federal government will find you.”

Find you? It’s no secret where they are. “They have homes, cars, businesses, belongings,” Woods said of the targeted families.

The truth is, Afghans have long been pawns in America’s shifting policies toward Afghanistan. My late mother, who worked in Afghanistan decades ago for women’s empowerment under contract to the United Nations, disclosed how.

Only much later did our government pay lip service to women’s plight under the Taliban. That was with George W. Bush’s declaration of war on Afghanistan to find 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. But Bin Laden was actually found in Pakistan, and the U.S. pullout again left women subject to its atrocities.

To compound the current insult and injury, Trump last month also cut humanitarian food aid to Afghanistan. The U.N. World Food Program has said 2 million Afghans - including more than 650,000 malnourished children, mothers and pregnant women -will lose food assistance.

Woods describes the Afghan students she works with as “delightful personalities,” who are doing really well in school. Now, she says, “They’ve been given five weeks to completely upend everything.”

Most chillingly, the girl who cried in her arms told Woods, “ ‘We won’t go back,’ We will take care of things a different way.’ ”

Woods believes that was an allusion to suicide. And it wouldn’t be the first time that prospect has come up in this context. On KCCI, Safi said many in the Afghan community would be “forced to commit suicide” rather than return to a hostile homeland.

The options available to Afghan refugees to change their status are limited. Applications for asylum have a 2.6 million backlog. And the Special Immigrant Visa program requires applicants prove they helped the U.S. in the war. Both require documentation that can be awfully hard to get.

But the tone of Noem’s letter reflects a broader attitude within the Trump administration that demonizes refugees, immigrants, foreign students and even Green Card holders- legal permanent residents. Especially those who exercise their freedom of speech, if Trump doesn’t like what they’re saying.

From KCCI News footage

Trump officials have complained of TPS recipients staying too long. His administration has also revoked TPS protections for people from Cameroon amidst armed conflict and human rights violations there. It has decreased the amount of time Haitians and are allowed to stay here under that protection. And Trump tried to use an 18th-century wartime law to deport some Venezuelan migrants, though a federal judge in Texas blocked that Thursday.

Now comes news that congressional Republicans want to add a $1,000 fee on every application for asylum. That status is available to those who can demonstrate a credible risk of persecution if they return to their homelands.

Together these actions represent a stunning reversal from past precedent in our interactions with other countries and people. And with such stories slamming us daily, it’s hard to grasp the full meaning and long-term impact of this rapid march to isolationism. At best, under this model, our engagements with other countries would be based purely on what we can extract from them financially.

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Asking around at the school and others where she substitutes, Woods was surprised to learn how few people even knew about the deportation orders. But she hopes as word gets out, more Iowans will respond by taking action.

If you’re concerned for the plight of Iowa’s Afghan refugees who face this untenable ultimatum, please call Iowa’s U.S. senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley. Ask them to protect these families’ rights to remain here.

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