May 25, 2025 By Richard Robbins 4 min read

What’s an ally worth? Plenty, if you’re in a foxhole or storming a beach with one. The same is true if, as a U.S. soldier, you had a native-guide ally on your team in the mountains and villages of Afghanistan in the treacherous months and years after 9/11.

Not so much if you are a member of the Trump administration sitting in a comfortable Washington, D.C., office.

Last month the Department of Homeland Security ordered the departure of some 9,000 Afghanistans from the United States. This includes Afghan men and women who aided the American military following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Rescued as the remnant of American troops beat a hasty retreat out of Kabul in 2021, some of the Afghans living and working in the United States since then were ordered to leave this country in seven days or risk involuntary deportation.

Termination of Afghan protective refugee status will go into effect in July, according to the Military Times.

The move to expel comes on the heels of the regular pummeling meted out by President Trump on the allies who won World War II with us and then stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S. during the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks.

It is a fact that the one and only time NATO’s Article Five has been invoked was after 9/11. Article Five is the centerpiece of the military alliance created at the end of World War II. It says that an attack on one is an attack on all.

“It’s a death sentence for them if they return” to Afghanistan, said Zia Ghafoori, an interpreter for U.S. Special Forces from 2002 to 2014, of the Afghans who were told to leave. Ghafoori became a naturalized American citizen in 2020.

“Maybe” Donald Trump doesn’t understand what’s going on, Ghafoori said.

Other voices have been harsher in their condemnations. Jack McCain, an Afghan war veteran and the son of Vietnam War hero Sen. John McCain, told NPR that the deportations would amount to a death sentence for some of the tossed Afghans.

McCain lamented that “allies … who fought alongside people like me … who risked their lives” are being so mistreated.

“If we deport such individuals,” said another Afghan war veteran, Bradley Bowman, a former instructor at West Point, “the consequences for those Afghans and their families will be severe and the decision [to deport] will be rightly viewed as a betrayal.”

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem lifted the ban on Afghan deportations, stating “improved security” and enhanced economic stability “no longer prevents” Afghans “from returning to their home country.”

“To say that the conditions in Afghanistan have improved … is clearly absurd,” said Afghan war veteran Seth Moultan, a Democratic member of Congress.

Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch told NPR that, “Taliban rule clearly makes returns unsafe.”

The Biden administration flew some 80,000 Afghans out of that troubled country as the Taliban returned to power in 2021, following the defeat of U.S.-supported government forces.

The chaotic evacuations were a watershed moment for President Joe Biden and his administration.

The 9,000 or so Afghans with deportation orders are here subject to temporary protection status. Afghans who are here free and clear have either secured asylum status or hold Special Immigration Visas, according to The Hill.

Why has the Trump administration turned on these Afghans, so many of whom were immeasurably helpful to the United States in time of dire need?

Ignorance and moral indifference come to mind – along with Donald Trump’s clueless bluster about American prowess, about how we won World War II practically by ourselves and about how we don’t need allies now.

Or, maybe, Afghans simply aren’t welcomed here. It’s increasingly the motto of the Trump administration, and it seems to apply to an endlessly growing list of people.

Richard Robbins in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.