These Syracuse men helped the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Now they fear they’ll be sent back

As they covered the war in Afghanistan, news reporters from the L.A. Times and NPR would ask interpreter Hashmat Baktash to arrange interviews with local people in hiding from the Taliban.

Afghans near the U.S.’s Bagram Airfield spoke reluctantly and often asked to remain anonymous, he said.

Now, Baktash is in a similar situation – this time in America, where new Afghan immigrants are suddenly hiding their names and faces.

Baktash, now a U.S. citizen and business owner, spoke on behalf of the many Syracuse community members who were afraid to talk to a news reporter after a shooting in Washington tarnished the community’s name and upended the path to citizenship for thousands of Afghans.

More than 400 Afghan families have moved to Syracuse in the last five years. Hundreds came on special immigration visas granted by the U.S. as thanks for serving alongside U.S. troops in the war. Their siblings, cousins, uncles and friends followed.

The shooting and President Donald Trump’s reaction have put tens of thousands of Afghan immigrants on notice: The U.S. government has frozen their visa and asylum applications and could even reopen their citizenship cases.

“People with green cards, with asylum cases approved, with any status, they are so afraid and scared. As a leader of the community, people came crying in front of me, worrying about what might happen to them,” Baktash said. “They even avoid going outside, aside from very urgent needs. This is disastrous.”

The day before Thanksgiving, an Afghan national who immigrated to the U.S. in 2021 after working with the U.S. military shot two West Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C. One died. One is in critical condition

Friends of the shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, said he was disturbed by the work he had done for a C.I.A.-supported military unit in the war.

Trump responded to the shooting by banning new travel visas for Afghans and others. New policies also interrupt applications for green cards and asylum for the thousands of Afghans already in the U.S. Trump hinted that he could even strip citizenship.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are already making arrests in Upstate New York, including Syracuse.

Last Monday, ICE agents arrested a 29-year-old Afghan man outside of his house on Park Street, in Syracuse. He was walking to the barber shop, community members said. The man had a work permit and a pending asylum case. He came recently, not on the special visa for military helpers, they said.

On Friday, ICE agents arrested another Afghan man outside his home in Camillus. He is a civil engineer who worked for a U.S. military subcontractor in Afghanistan, but he does not have a special immigration visa, Baktash said.

An immigration judge in July ordered the man removed from the country. He has a pending appeal, according to the immigration court website.

Both are being held in a Batavia detention center, records show.

In Albany, the federal government detained 10 Afghans in the days after the shooting. ICE agents stopped a father and son outside a mosque after early morning prayers, the Albany Times-Union reported.

Now, Afghans in Syracuse are reluctant to go to mosque, school or even buy groceries.

Baktash owns a store on the North Side – the Kabul Bazaar – where he and three employees sell dried fruits, nuts and rugs imported from Afghanistan. They bake more than 200 loaves of Afghan bread every day.

Afghans have been calling the store to request food deliveries – something the store normally does not offer.

Baktash is also president of a new group called the Onondaga County Afghan Community.

The group does not quite know how to respond in a way that allows them to pay respects to the National Guard members and, at the same time, avoid too much exposure. They tried to organize a gathering last weekend, but decided against it.

Four members of the community spoke to syracuse.com anonymously.

Afghans are so ashamed, they said, they can’t look their co-workers in the eye.

The shooting is out of character for Afghans, who came to the U.S. to seek peace, they said.

“That’s not us,” Baktash said. “Everyone is trying to have a peaceful life. I was born and raised in war and that’s the only reason I wanted to apply for a special immigration visa and come to the U.S.”

Trump’s reaction is also not typical of the warm reception Americans have offered the Afghans who helped them – when they met and fought together and now as they build new lives in Syracuse, they said.

One thing is clear, they said: Returning to Afghanistan is not an option.

As part of the vetting process, Afghans gave the U.S. government blood and saliva samples and allowed them to take pictures of their eyes. These biometric records have surely fallen into the hands of the Taliban as the U.S. made its hasty evacuation, they said.

“Afghanistan is no longer your home,” Baktash said. “I cannot even think about it because I know, if I go, I will be killed.”

‘This is our home’

In August of 2021, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the Taliban moved into Kabul. Afghans withdrew their life’s savings and rushed to the airport. News footage showed people clinging to aircraft as it departed Kabul.

In Syracuse, advocates and retired military veterans organized a kind of underground railroad to help their friends and colleagues out of the country.

Baktash was already here. At the time, about 70 Afghan families were living in Syracuse, he said.

Over the next four years, the number would grow to at least 400 families, he said.

Nonprofit resettlement groups and local advocates helped families find apartments, furniture and warm clothes.

Since then, many new Afghan immigrants have learned English.

Their children have enrolled in school. New U.S. citizen children have been born here.

One man who spoke to syracuse.com anonymously told this story:

He has three children under the age of 10. The two older children were born in Afghanistan. The youngest, 2, was born in Syracuse.

“Two nights ago, my son told me, if they send us back to Afghanistan, what will happen to our sister? Will they take her away from us?’ “ he said. “This is not the age they should think of these things.”

Afghans in Syracuse own homes and small businesses. They work at the Amazon warehouse, deliver auto parts and work in factories.

One man who handled the finances for a U.S. military subcontractor in Afghanistan said he plans to open an auto repair shop in Syracuse.

There are Afghan doctors and civil engineers.

Some members of the next generation are enrolled in medical school. At least one joined the U.S. Marines. They take on careers they see as giving back to the country that adopted them, advocates said.

“We are part of this community. This is our home. This is our land,” Baktash said. “This is our society and we shouldn’t live in fear, but unfortunately, we do. All of us have been impacted.”

Many, like Baktash, have become citizens.

But that takes years.

Most people who came in 2021 have applied for asylum or have been approved for asylum and are still waiting for a green card.

A broken promise

In the days after the shooting, Trump raised questions about the swift evacuation and accused President Joe Biden’s administration of inadequate vetting.

The four men interviewed by syracuse.com last week described the vetting process they went through as the U.S. military evacuated them. It was run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

It started at the airport in Afghanistan, they said.

The Taliban controlled the area outside the airport. Americans controlled the space inside.

Americans took blood and saliva samples for DNA. They took fingerprints and pictures of their eyes for biometric identification, they said.

Then, the refugees were sent to third countries – Qatar or Germany or Albania – where they answered more questions about their lives. They shared information about their birthplaces, their education and their workplaces.

It took months for some families to get to the U.S., they said.

Since then, they have filled out more applications for asylum and green cards.

The men said they do not mind going through it again if that’s what it takes to put this to rest.

“We are not against the vetting, as many times as they want to do it,” Baktash said. “I want that too if there is a bad guy in any community.”

He said the threat of mass deportation over one bad apple is unfair to a community that helped the U.S. military for two decades.

It is especially shocking to Afghans that America would break a promise to people who risked their lives to side with the U.S. in a fight against their own countrymen.

Granting political asylum is a practice as old as war and one the U.S. formalized after Vietnam, when hundreds of thousands of U.S. sympathizers fled Saigon.

What will happen the next time Americans find themselves in need of interpreters, drivers and soldiers in a foreign land?, they asked.

“I’m sure that if this happens, no one will trust the presence of the U.S. in the future,” one man said.