SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — An Afghan man who once helped the U.S. military abroad is being held in ICE detention after his arrest Thursday.
It’s part of a recent wave of federal courthouse arrests in San Diego and across the country.
Cellphone video obtained by FOX 5/KUSI shows federal agents as they approached the asylum-seeker moments after his first hearing and repeatedly asked him for his name.
The man, who was accompanied by his attorney, refused to answer and agents proceeded to handcuff the man in the hallway of the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego before producing a warrant.
The man stated that he worked with the U.S. military in his home country and has documents to prove it.
His attorney, Brian McGoldrick, confirmed his client was an interpreter for the U.S. Army for three years before the 2021 Taliban takeover.
“He and his brothers had a logistics company in Afghanistan, and they provided a lot of material,” McGoldrick said.
Word of the arrest sent shockwaves through AfghanEvac, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Afghan allies.
“Every message they’re sending to Afghans is we don’t want you here, get out, which is wild and especially considering how many Veterans care about this. Because if they get sent back, they’re dead,” said Shawn VanDiver, President and Founder of AfghanEvac.
VanDiver said the man’s wife was previously threatened by the Taliban at a wedding where one of his brother’s was murdered.
“So, he fled to Iran. Got to Brazil on a humanitarian visa and walked here from Brazil,” VanDiver added.
“The whole world is watching what’s happening with these folks. How is anybody going to stand by us again?” VanDiver said.
Meanwhile, McGoldrick is keeping his client’s name confidential for safety reasons, but said he has a pending Special Immigrant visa, no criminal record and was legally paroled into the U.S.
“He finally got an appointment with CBP One and he presented himself at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, I think July 6 of 2024,” said Brian McGoldrick, immigration attorney for the Afghan asylum-seeker.
He said a judge denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case.
“The government simply used a statue that allows them to say that his Notice to Appear was improvidently issued,” McGoldrick said.
“That means that the Notice to Appear would’ve been mistakenly issued,” explained immigration attorney Saman Nasseri.
He explained the approach is becoming more and more common in immigration court.
“The way that they’ve been justifying arresting people at these hearings is they’re dismissing terminating the notices to appear, putting people in expedited removal proceedings,” Nasseri said.
However, McGoldrick said when he asked for more information regarding the Notice to Appear and reasoning behind the request for case dismissal, the government’s attorney refused to elaborate.
McGoldrick said he hadn’t been able to speak with his client while he’s detained in Otay Mesa. He explained that he could remain in custody for months until his asylum hearing in September.
“It’s really ICE’s discretion to hold him or not,” he added. “We don’t have a relationship with Afghanistan that allows us to return immigrants. It’s kind of scary to think that if he were put in expedited removal where would he go?”
FOX 5/KUSI reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for comment but have not heard back.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
