Editor’s note: Writer Sasha Abramsky, who wrote a photo essay on Sacramento’s Afghan community last year, checked in with his sources and other community members for their reactions to the suspension of asylum cases for Afghans.

The day before Thanksgiving, a 29-year-old man named Rahmanullah Lakanwal shot two National Guard members from West Virginia who were involved in the Trump-ordered military patrol of Washington, D.C. Both guard members were critically injured; one, Sarah Beckstrom, died of her injuries shortly after.

Lakanwal had reportedly worked with the CIA during the United States’ 20-year engagement in Afghanistan. He was allowed into the U.S. in 2021 after the Taliban regained control in the country and received asylum status in the early months of the Trump presidency.

In the immediate aftermath of the killing, all pending asylum cases were put on hold. All Afghans trying to get visas to come into the U.S. were told their visa applications would not be processed. All immigration and green card hearings for residents of 19 countries put on a “travel ban” list were cancelled, and the administration announced it would re-examine all asylum, green card and other visa statuses gained by Afghans living in the U.S. since 2021.

Overnight, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children had their status thrown into jeopardy. Thousands of them live in the Sacramento region, one of the top relocation destinations for Afghans and home to the country’s largest Afghan American community, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Many of the adults who have fought with, or otherwise aided, the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan are at risk of torture or execution should they be returned to that country.

“It shouldn’t be generalized,” says Zaki Raihan, owner of the Lapis Grill, a Carmichael restaurant that serves Afghan cuisine. “In every nation, every country, there are people with mental issues. … We should not associate that with a religion, a tribe, a nationality.” Raihan says that he, personally, isn’t scared, but he increasingly worries that “we live in a country where we are dealing with ICE. They assume everyone and every immigrant are bad people.”

Farzana Karimi, a woman who came to the U.S. on a special immigrant visa after working with U.S. forces for five years, and who now has U.S. citizenship, agrees with this sentiment. “The person who commits the crime is solely responsible for it; not his family, community, ethnicity, language group, religion. Personal responsibility is one of the central pillars of justice systems around the world,” she says.

Several other Sacramento-area Afghans spoken to for this article didn’t want their names used. “There is a lot of fear and anxiety, and a greater sense of collective punishment by the government toward the Afghan community,” one man said. “This community helped the U.S. in their war in Afghanistan. That’s why they’re here. In Sacramento, the families are fearful to go outside. It’s difficult to take their children to the park.”

The suspension of asylum processing “is a major blow to the community. They feel betrayed by the administration,” he continued. “I have family members here, my kids, siblings with asylum cases pending. There’s uncertainty here for people who have applied for asylum. And people with green cards and approved asylum cases are afraid of being reevaluated and deported.”

He told Comstock’s that the reason his family was in the U.S. was because they had been vocal in their criticism of what the Taliban was doing, including the group’s abysmal human rights record and removal of girls’ access to education. “Yesterday,” he says, “they hanged a person in public. That’s the situation in Afghanistan — especially for people who backed the U.S.” And, now, he felt, the net was closing in in the U.S. as well.

“You cannot do anything. If you raise your voice, you’ll be labeled by the administration. It’s a very terrible situation to be in,” he says. “I love America. I have been here for the last 10 years. My kids go to school, my wife to college. I have a job. A community should not be punished for an individual’s act.”

Another local Afghan-born resident, who worked with U.S. forces in a psych-ops task force in Afghanistan, bitterly reflected on the irony of working to root out terrorists in Afghanistan only to now be labeled a potential terrorist and criminal by the current administration because of the acts of another person.

“This is something unfair,” he says. “When a person is committing a crime, it is totally and only a personal event. The government is trying to punish people collectively. This is, I believe, against humanity. I worked with U.S. forces, came to this country legally, was vetted by lots of organizations in Afghanistan. I was polygraphed three times while working with U.S. forces. I am asking President Trump to not generalize and single out a whole community.”

–

Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.