In a video that has flooded the internet, Afghan ally Sayed Naser was arrested and put in handcuffs by two masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents following his June 12 hearing at a San Diego Courthouse.
“What’s your name?” the agents asked.
“I work for the U.S. military back in my home country. I have all the documents….I was [an] interpreter,” Naser explains, turning to a group filming the incident and continuing to speak calmly about his situation as ICE agents led him down a hallway and into an elevator with his lawyer, Brian McGoldrick.
McGoldrick told members of the press that the incident was only captured thanks to volunteers who gather daily outside the San Diego courthouse and “wait in the hallway along with all the ICE agents to video what’s happening.”
McGoldrick also said that prior to his client’s arrest, the day held another difficult surprise for Naser when the counsel for the U.S. government motioned to have his asylum case dismissed on the grounds that his notice to appear had been “improvidently issued.”
When the judge asked him to respond to the government’s motion, McGoldrick says he requested the government “tell us what was improvident.”
The government counsel responded, “We don’t have to explain why it’s improvident. We just have to make the allegation.”
The judge has given McGoldrick 10 days to file an opposition in response to the government counsel’s motion. In the event his opposition is successful, the judge scheduled a merits hearing for Naser’s asylum case in September.
Naser remains in removal proceedings awaiting the outcome of his attorney’s motion, though he is undoubtedly an ally who faces danger if returned to his homeland.
Naser initially applied for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) after his country fell to Taliban control, citing years spent working with his two brothers as a translator and logistics contractor for U.S. personnel in multiple Afghan provinces as the rationale for his eligibility.
Naser was—and is still—awaiting Chief of Mission approval, the first phase of the SIV progress, when Taliban forces stormed a family wedding in 2023 and murdered his brother. Out of fear that he would be the Taliban’s next target, Naser fled to Iran with his wife and two children.
Naser made the difficult choice to leave his family behind and travel to Brazil in April 2024. After making the grueling journey through the deadly Darien Gap and towards the U.S.-Mexico border, Nasr finally procured a CBP One App appointment in July 2024. He was subsequently paroled into the U.S. and placed into removal proceedings, standard practice for immigrants who are awaiting asylum adjudications or visa applications that would grant them permanent status.
Just months before his scheduled master calendar hearing, when his asylum request would be heard by an immigration judge, Naser received notice from the Department of Homeland Security in April explaining that parole had been revoked and that he must self-deport using the CBP Home App.
As an SIV-eligible ally awaiting asylum adjudication that should have offered him protection—and because his brother, who also fled to the U.S. through the Brazil route, received asylum just weeks ago—Naser believed that he was safe to remain in the U.S.
Now, his fate turns on the outcome of McGoldrick’s opposition to the government counsel’s motion to dismiss.
Amidst public outcry about his fate, Naser’s wife and children only learned of his arrest by watching it online.
Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac, told the press that Naser’s arrest is part of a “broader pattern” of “quiet policy shifts that make it harder for our allies to get protection.” He also said he believes the dismissal of Naser’s case “is a deliberate use of vague legal language to meet enforcement quotas,” referencing the announcement that ICE officials have been told to arrest 3,000 individuals per day.
“What happened to Sayed is not the beginning,” VanDiver said. “It’s just the most recent and most visible moment in a long line of quiet decisions designed to make it harder for our allies to reach safety. And frankly, this is just what we know. We have no idea how many others this has happened to in silence,” he said.
