US President Donald Trump's proposal to send Afghan asylum seekers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo is raising alarms among immigrant advocates, who see this bold move as a threat to all asylum seekers.
The Afghans in question number around 1,100 and have been stranded at Camp Asayliyah in Qatar since 2021, when the US fully withdrew from Afghanistan and the country fell to the Taliban. The news was first reported by The New York Times earlier this month, which is how the Afghan asylum seekers say they learned of Trump's proposal.
"It's a dire situation because the funding has been cut in those camps. The promise has been broken after they've been asked to give up their lives and families to work alongside [the US forces] for decades," Spojmie Naciri, a California-based immigration attorney, herself a first-generation Afghan American immigrant, told The New Arab .
"They were taken in on humanitarian parole. This administration has taken the stance that they haven't been vetted, but they have been fully vetted," she said. She notes that third-country deportations are on the rise, and she worries Trump's targeting of Afghans could extend to those in the US, including green card holders and permanent residents.
These Afghans, many of them waiting along with their spouses and children, served as interpreters and other support staff for the US military and would be seen as traitors under the current Taliban government.
In a joint statement earlier this month, the Afghans facing deportation from Qatar released a joint statement describing their living conditions and concerns over their relocation options.
"We will say this plainly," reads their statement that they issued from Camp Asyliyah. "We do not want to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have no family there. We have no language there. We have no legal status there. It is a country in its own war. We have been in enough war. We cannot take our children into another one."
The statement continues, "We also cannot return to Afghanistan. The Taliban will kill many of us for what we did for the United States. This is not a fear. This is a fact. The United States knows this because the United States is the reason we cannot go home."
They conclude, "We are asking to be remembered now. We are asking to come to the country we served."
Since the November 2025 shootings of US service members in Washington, DC, in late November 2025, the Trump administration has essentially frozen Afghan asylum applications, punishing a largely peaceful community for the action of one man.
Afghans who worked with US forces, along with their immediate family members, are among the most heavily vetted immigrant applicants to the US. Despite this, Trump has signed two executive orders aimed at preventing Afghan asylum seekers from immigrating to the US.
"We condemn reported plans to ship Afghan refugees who assisted the US to a country they have never been to or face persecution at the hands of the Taliban upon forced return to Afghanistan," Laurie Ball Cooper, Vice President for US Legal Programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project, said in a statement for TNA .
"Unfortunately, this is consistent with so many inhumane and illegal policies instituted by this administration. Our allies, and all people fleeing persecution, deserve better," she said.
According to multiple international organisations, the humanitarian situation in the Congo is critical, with many people facing serious cases of hunger, internal displacement due to ongoing conflict and various human rights violations. Trump has made agreements with countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America for third-country relocations of deportees, often in exchange for financial benefits to that country's leadership.
"I think this goes against everything we stand for as a nation," said Naciri. "In the future, you won't have citizens of other countries trusting the US government."