Appeals Court Blocks Trump from Ending Afghan Migrant Amnesty

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghan migrants who were imported to the United States under former President Joe Biden.

In May, Trump’s DHS announced that the agency would end TPS, a quasi-amnesty program, for about 75,000 Afghan migrants whom the Biden administration had resettled across the U.S. in mere months.

CASA, Inc., the open borders organization, filed a lawsuit.

TPS for Afghans was supposed to be terminated on July 12, but the appeals court has now halted DHS from moving forward with the plan, giving the Trump administration and CASA about a week to file briefs on the merits of the lawsuit.

There has been widespread fraud and abuse within the Afghan resettlement carried out by Biden, law enforcement agencies and inspectors general offices have repeatedly found.

In one such recent case, a 27-year-old Afghan man was arrested in Oklahoma last year after allegedly planning an Election Day terrorist attack on Americans. The man had been brought to the United States through Biden’s massive resettlement operation.

In April 2023, a former Department of Defense (DOD) official revealed to Congress that some unvetted Afghans were resettled in the U.S. who were found to have been involved in placing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan to kill American troops.

In 2021, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) requested information about the number of Afghans who sought entry to the U.S. and were listed on the federal government’s “No Fly List” because of their ties to Islamic terrorism. Biden’s top agency officials refused to disclose the total.

In September 2022, the DHS Inspector General (IG) issued a bombshell report detailing how the Biden administration imported Afghans who were “not fully vetted” and could “pose a risk to national security.”

Similarly, in February 2022, a DOD IG report revealed that Biden’s agencies failed to properly vet Afghans who arrived in the United States and that about 50 Afghans were flagged for “significant security concerns” after their resettlement.

Most of the unvetted Afghans flagged for possible terrorism ties, the DOD IG report stated, have since disappeared into American communities. The report noted that as of September 17, 2021, only three of 31 Afghans flagged with specific “derogatory information” could be located.

In August 2022, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) detailed allegations from a whistleblower who claimed the Biden administration knowingly resettled almost 400 Afghans in the United States who were listed as “potential threats” in federal databases and urged staff to cut corners in the vetting process.

In May 2022, a Project Veritas report alleged the Biden administration resettled Afghans listed on the federal government’s “Terrorism Watch List” in American communities.