A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from deporting Afghan nationals to Afghanistan or Pakistan, grounding a deportation flight that had been scheduled to leave Louisiana on Election Day carrying about 150 Afghans toward Taliban rule. The order, issued hours before the plane was due to depart, capped a day of courtroom reversals, congressional pressure and protests from veterans' groups who warned the passengers included relatives of people who had stood alongside American forces.
U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni of the Southern District of New York issued the order on November 3, barring deportations of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan or Pakistan through November 7, according to reports. The government is due to respond to the underlying lawsuit on November 5. Advocates who had spent days warning that the flight was imminent described the ruling as a reprieve, not a final victory, and cautioned that the plan behind it had not been withdrawn.
The flight at the centre of the case had been scheduled to lift off from Alexandria, Louisiana, at around 7 p.m. on Tuesday, bound for Pakistan, according to Shawn VanDiver, president and founder of #AfghanEvac, a coalition that helps resettle Afghans who aided the American war effort. From Pakistan, advocates and court filings said, the passengers were expected to be transported onward overland into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The United States has no functioning embassy in Kabul and no diplomatic relationship with the Taliban government, so a direct deportation flight to Afghanistan was not possible — a complication that shaped the entire plan.
The Court Order
The order followed a lawsuit filed on Monday by Project Rousseau, a New York City nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrants, on behalf of Afghan clients it said were set to be deported as early as Tuesday. The organisation argued that its clients faced expulsion to Pakistan and onward to Afghanistan, where they could face detention, torture or worse.
In court in Manhattan on Tuesday, hours before the scheduled departure, a government lawyer relayed word from a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official that the agency had no planned or confirmed chartered or commercial flights for Afghans this week, and that such flights take weeks to arrange, according to court records cited in reporting. The government agreed to be held to that representation, and Judge Caproni wrote that the government had effectively represented that no Afghan nationals would be deported to Afghanistan or Pakistan this week.
Bloomberg Law reported that the judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking any planned or confirmed flights, covering any potential deportations.
How the Flight Plan Surfaced
The plan first emerged publicly on Friday, when a U.S. official and a coalition of veterans and advocacy groups disclosed that the administration intended to deport roughly 150 to nearly 200 Afghan nationals, routing them through Pakistan. The New York Times reported that more than 150 Afghans were expected to be deported in a first wave, with the first flight possible as early as Monday.
Court filings then filled in the route in unusual detail. In a sworn declaration dated October 30, Sergio Aguilar, a supervisory detention and deportation officer at ICE, said a planned charter flight scheduled for Tuesday, November 3, would land in Pakistan before an Afghan national was transported onward to Afghanistan by land. Aguilar wrote that he had initially understood the charter would land in Afghanistan but subsequently learned that Pakistan would be its destination.
The declaration was filed in a federal case involving Said Mansor Sadat, a 30-year-old Afghan national who had been assigned to the special charter flight. Sadat has since been removed from the flight list and released from ICE custody, according to his attorney, after a judge ruled that his continued detention violated his due process rights.
A separate ruling in New Mexico blocked ICE from putting Sardar Akbari, an Afghan national, on a charter flight headed to Pakistan on November 3 without notice or an opportunity to present a claim of fear of persecution or torture. The court barred his removal for 14 days, after his legal team described an acute mental health crisis when he learned of the planned deportation.
Who Was on the List
Advocates said the would-be passengers were not a random cross-section of immigration cases. Among those facing deportation, according to court records and advocacy groups, was a man who fled Afghanistan after Taliban fighters detained him, beat him and threatened him for helping their enemies. Attorneys and advocates said the group also included women, LGBTQ+ people and members of religious and ethnic minorities, as well as brothers, sons and other relatives of men who served alongside American forces.
VanDiver has repeatedly stressed that many of those facing removal arrived after the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, including people who worked alongside American troops and aid organisations. "We made a promise to these families," he said after Tuesday's ruling. "Today we kept it for one more day. Our job is to keep it for good." He added: "Pressure got the plane grounded. The court makes sure it stays grounded."
Savi Arvey, director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First, called the plan unprecedented in scale: her organisation, which tracks deportation flights, had never seen the United States try to deport so many Afghans at once.
The Backlash
The backlash crossed party and institutional lines with unusual speed. More than 60 members of Congress, in a letter led by Representative Scott Peters, a California Democrat, demanded the immediate cancellation of any deportation flights carrying Afghans and Iranians, whether sent directly or through another country. The letter warned that routing a flight through a third country does not change American obligations, and urged the administration to make clear to Pakistan that the United States would not accept its help in handing deportees onward to the Taliban.
"Our nation made a promise to stand by the Afghans who risked their lives and their families' safety to stand by U.S. service members," Peters said at a news conference on November 3. "Sending them to the Taliban breaks that promise."
At an October 31 news conference, Rubio had directed a reporter asking about the flight to the Department of Homeland Security. By Tuesday evening, the government's position in the Manhattan courtroom was that no flight was planned or confirmed for this week at all.
What This Means
The ruling matters beyond the single flight because of the legal route it tested. Returning people to a government Washington does not recognise, by way of a third country, would have stretched the deportation system into new territory — and it would have done so for people the United States itself warns its own citizens not to visit. If the courts ultimately allow such third-country transfers, advocates fear, the same mechanism could be used for other nationalities whose home governments Washington cannot or will not deal with directly.
The case also exposes a tension at the heart of the administration's mass deportation drive: the same government that designated Afghanistan a state sponsor of wrongful detention in March was preparing to send Afghans back into Taliban custody through a neighbouring country. That contradiction was central to the congressional letter and the court filings, and is likely to feature in the government's response due on November 5.
What Happens Next
The immediate timeline is short. The Manhattan order bars deportations to Afghanistan or Pakistan through November 7, and the government must respond to the lawsuit by November 5. Advocates will be watching that filing closely for any sign that the administration intends to revive the flight, re-route it, or argue that the court's order should lapse.
The reprieve may prove brief. VanDiver has warned that the plan to route Afghans through Pakistan has not been withdrawn, and that ICE has told some detainees the flight will now leave in a week or two. That warning means families who celebrated on Tuesday evening could face the same threat again within days, unless the court extends its order or Congress acts on the protections veterans' groups have long sought, including temporary protected status for Afghans in the United States.
Other cases will also continue in parallel, including the New Mexico order protecting Akbari, which runs for 14 days, and challenges in Texas and Oklahoma, where earlier filings first disclosed the November flight schedule.
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