ISLAMABAD (AP) — A leading rights group said on Wednesday that Pakistan’s authorities have intensified pressure on Afghan refugees to go back to neighboring Afghanistan, where they risk persecution by the Taliban and face dire economic conditions.

“Pakistani officials should immediately stop coercing Afghans to return home and give those facing expulsion the opportunity to seek protection,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan should prevent any reprisals against returning Afghans and reverse their abusive policies against women and girls,” she said.

Pakistan set a March 31 deadline for the deportation of all foreigners living illegally in the country. Most of them are Afghans.

The HRW appeal came a month after the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad said that Pakistan has stepped up arrests of Afghan citizens in Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi for forced expulsion.

However, Pakistan has dismissed the allegation by Kabul, saying that the authorities were only trying to facilitate conditions for the swift return of Afghans to their home country.

More than 500,000 Afghans who fled the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 have been living without papers in Pakistan, thousands of them waiting for resettlement in the United States and elsewhere.

There are also around 1.45 million Afghan refugees, registered with the U.N. refugee agency, most of whom fled during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of their country. Last July, Pakistan extended the stay of refugees registered with UNHCR until June, saying they won’t be arrested or deported at least until the extension expires.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump paused American refugee programs for at least three months and since then, around 20,000 Afghans who were awaiting resettlement in Pakistan are now in limbo. Afghans waiting for relocation to the United States have also urged Trump to restore the refugee program to end their ordeal.

HRW said in a statement that the human rights situation in Afghanistan has continued to deteriorate since the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

“Women and girls are banned from post primary education and denied a broad range of rights and freedoms. Human rights defenders, journalists, and former government personnel are at particular risk,” the group said.

The statement also said that Afghans returning to their country struggle to survive amid Afghanistan’s soaring unemployment rate, broken health care system and dwindling foreign assistance.

Earlier this year, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had also approved the March 31 deadline for the deportation of those Afghans awaiting relocation to third countries unless their cases are swiftly processed by the governments that have agreed to take them.

“Afghanistan is not safe for any forced refugee returns,” Pearson said, “Countries that pledged to resettle at-risk Afghans should respond to the urgency of the situation in Pakistan and expedite those cases.”

HRW said that Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has also announced that Afghans without official residence documents, along with holders of Afghan Citizen Cards, must leave the cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi or face deportation.

“Afghans holding Proof of Registration (PoR) cards must leave by June 30,” it said.

More than 800,000 Afghans have returned home or have been expelled by force from Pakistan since 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency that tracks migration.

More than 70% of those returning to Afghanistan have been women and children, including girls of secondary school age and women who will no longer have access to education, according to HRW.

The group said that “Pakistani police have raided houses, beat and arbitrarily detained people, and confiscated refugee documents, including residence permits. They have demanded bribes to allow Afghans to remain in Pakistan.”

LAUREL, Md. (AP) — Rahmani worked for a U.S.-backed organization in Kabul, which put him at risk of Taliban retribution. Now, the father of two is among thousands of newly arrived refugees who lost financial assistance when the Trump administration cut off funding for the federal refugee program in January.

He moved here in November through the vetted form of legal migration. To fast-track self-sufficiency, it provides refugees with wraparound services for three months — help with housing, food and job placement — while other federal grants support their first five years.

Instead, Rahmani’s relocation services were largely halted after only two months, when the Trump administration upended the refugee program. He otherwise would have qualified for extended rental assistance for up to six months.

He has spent weeks looking for work, with no luck. Unable to pay his rent, his anxiety mounts by the day. Here’s a look at key elements of the plight he and his family face.

Resettlement agencies are reeling from disruption of funding

Rahmani is a client of Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, a local faith-based resettlement agency that is waiting on $3.7 million in federal funding for work it has already provided.

LSSNCA has struggled to make payroll, and its support services have fallen like dominoes after it was forced to lay off 75 people and furlough seven others.

Two-thirds of its clients are Afghan allies, who were offered visas and protection in the United States after the Taliban returned to power. These Afghans worked alongside U.S. troops or, like Rahmani, were employed by U.S.-backed organizations. Rahmani is identified using only one of his names because he still fears for his family’s safety.

The risk of widespread evictions

By early March, at least 42 households under LSSNCA’s care had received eviction notices, putting nearly 170 people in Virginia and Maryland on the edge of homelessness, with more — like Rahmani’s family — at risk. The staff has been fundraising and negotiating with landlords to stave off evictions.

The organization raised $500,000 in six weeks, but that doesn’t fill the gap left by frozen government funds.

Global Refuge is the parent organization of LSSNCA and has long served as one of 10 national agencies partnering with the federal government to resettle refugees. It has received no federal reimbursements for work done since Inauguration Day and has laid off hundreds of staff. Nearly 6,000 refugees in its care were within 90 days of arrival, the initial aid window, when it received a stop-work order from the Trump administration.

Across resettlement agencies nationwide, support for at least 30,000 recent arrivals was affected. At LSSNCA, 369 people were within their first 90 days in the U.S., and another 850 clients were eligible for longer-term services.

“We’re seeing the de facto wholesale destruction of a longstanding bipartisan program that saved millions of lives,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge.

Refugees fled instability, only to find more of it in the U.S.

LSSNCA’s capacity has been stretched thin before. The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 led to a surge of Afghans being resettled in the U.S.

LSSNCA went from serving 500 people a year to 500 people a month. They staffed up to deal with the influx of Afghans, with case managers working long hours. The quality of their work suffered: Federal reimbursements were often delayed, and they struggled to provide services. The difference then was they knew the federal government backed their work.

Marjila Badakhsh came to the U.S. in December of 2021. A journalist who worked for a U.S.-funded Afghan media organization, she was evacuated from Kabul and resettled in Virginia.

Once a LSSNCA client, she was later hired at the organization, only to be laid off in January when the agency received its stop-work order.

“After three years, with one policy I’m thinking that I’m back to the day that I came to the United States for the first time, and I should start again,” she said.

She stays busy applying to jobs in Virginia and California, where her brother — who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Afghanistan — was recently resettled. But her dreams of one day welcoming their parents and sister to the U.S. are on hold after the suspension of the U.S. refugee program.

Lawsuits against the Trump administration have been filed over its immigration policies, with one judge ruling in favor of three faith-based resettlement agencies. In a recent court filing, administration lawyers argued that initial refugee benefits are “not required by law.” They indicated it would take months to comply with a court order to restart the program.

This week, Global Refuge received some federal reimbursements for its work during the Biden administration. Those funds came through the Department of Health and Human Services. Global Refuge has not received federal payments for work done since late January, and it has not received reimbursements for the 90-day aid offered through the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.___

Associated Press writer Gary Fields contributed to this report from Washington.

LAUREL, Md. (AP) — The rent is due, but Rahmani has no money to pay it.

The Afghan father of two worked for a U.S.-backed organization in Kabul, which put him at risk of Taliban retribution. Now he is among thousands of newly arrived refugees who lost financial assistance when the Trump administration cut off funding for the federal refugee program in January.

His family’s monthly rent and utilities total nearly $1,850, an unfathomable amount compared to what he once paid in Kabul.

He has spent weeks looking for work, walking along the suburban highway across from his family’s apartment, inquiring at small markets and big box stores. So far, there are no job leads.

He moved here in November with the federal refugee program, a vetted form of legal migration to the U.S. for those fleeing persecution. To fast-track self-sufficiency, it provides refugees with wraparound services for three months — help with housing, food and job placement — while other federal grants support their first five years.

Instead, Rahmani’s relocation services were largely halted after only two months, when the Trump administration upended the refugee program. He otherwise would have qualified for extended rental assistance for up to six months. Still jobless and unable to make ends meet, his anxiety mounts by the day.

Rahmani is a client of Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, a local faith-based resettlement agency also in disarray. The organization is waiting on $3.7 million in federal reimbursements for work it has already provided.

LSSNCA has struggled to make payroll, and its support services have fallen like dominoes after it was forced to lay off 75 people and furlough seven others. Nearly a third of its staff is now gone, with its case management team hit the hardest, leaving many refugees without a steady presence as they navigate their new lives.

Two-thirds of its clients are Afghan allies, who were offered visas and protection in the United States after the Taliban returned to power. These Afghans worked alongside U.S. troops or, like Rahmani, were employed by U.S.-backed organizations.

Rahmani worked in information technology in Afghanistan for a large Afghan media organization, which the U.S. helped fund as part of its democracy-building efforts. He is identified using only one of his names because he still fears for his family’s safety.

Sitting in his spartan apartment, he gestured to his daughter, a bright-eyed, dark-haired toddler in Hello Kitty leggings. She just turned 2; a “happy birthday” banner still hangs on the wall.

Rahmani came here for the futures of both his daughter and 7-year-old son. “Because in my own country, girls are not allowed to go to school.”

Now he wonders if coming here was a mistake.

“If they kick me out from the apartment, where should I stay?” he asked. “Should I stay with my family in the road?”

The risk of widespread evictions

Covering the rental assistance promised to new refugees is LSSNCA’s most pressing concern. By early March, at least 42 households under its care had received eviction notices, putting nearly 170 people in Virginia and Maryland on the edge of homelessness, with more — like Rahmani’s family — at risk. The staff has been negotiating with landlords and fundraising to stave off evictions.

“It is like a daily conversation about how much money came in today,” said Kristyn Peck, CEO of LSSNCA. “OK, who’s most at risk of eviction out of all these people? … Whose rent can we pay first? And they’re just kind of impossible choices.”

The organization raised $500,000 in six weeks, but that doesn’t fill the gap left by frozen government funds. LSSNCA had expected President Donald Trump to lower refugee admissions, as he did during his first term, but they didn’t anticipate losing funds for refugees already in the U.S.

The Rev. Rachel Vaagenes, pastor of Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., started a GoFundMe for LSSNCA in February and quickly raised $25,000 to cover rent for three families in Maryland for three months.

“It’s a drop in the bucket, right? Even if there were a thousand churches doing this, we still couldn’t do what the U.S. government does,” Vaagenes said. “We cannot make up the gap, no matter how much we want to as individual congregations.”

Global Refuge is the parent organization of LSSNCA and has long served as one of 10 national agencies partnering with the federal government to resettle refugees. The vast majority of Global Refuge’s funding comes from state and federal dollars, which accounted for more than 95% of its 2023 budget. It has received no federal reimbursements for work done since Inauguration Day and has laid off hundreds of staff. Nearly 6,000 refugees in its care were within 90 days of arrival, the initial aid window, when it received a stop-work order from the Trump administration.

Across resettlement agencies nationwide, support for at least 30,000 recent arrivals was affected. At LSSNCA, 369 people were within their first 90 days in the U.S.; 850 more clients were eligible for longer-term services.

“We’re seeing the de facto wholesale destruction of a longstanding bipartisan program that saved millions of lives,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge.

Refugees fled instability, only to find more of it in the U.S.

LSSNCA’s capacity has been stretched thin before. The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 led to a surge of Afghans being resettled in the U.S.

LSSNCA went from serving 500 people a year to 500 a month. They staffed up to deal with the influx of Afghans, with case managers working late into the night. The quality of their work suffered: Federal reimbursements were often delayed, and they struggled to provide services. The difference then was they knew the federal government backed their work.

Marjila Badakhsh came to the U.S. in December of 2021. A journalist who worked for a U.S.-funded Afghan media organization, she was evacuated from Kabul, eventually landing at a military base in New Jersey before LSSNCA took her case and she was resettled in Virginia.

She was later hired at LSSNCA, putting her language skills to use with Afghan clients. Though recently promoted, she was among those laid off in January when the agency received its stop-work order.

“I was thinking that I’m stable at this job, and I’m building my career here,” she said. “But right now, after three years, with one policy I’m thinking that I’m back to the day that I came to the United States for the first time, and I should start again.”

She stays busy applying to jobs in Virginia and California, where her brother — who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military in Afghanistan — was recently resettled. But her dreams of one day welcoming their parents and sister to the U.S. are on hold after Trump suspended most of the refugee program.

Other LSSNCA clients remain in limbo. Anastasiia De Zoysa fled war-torn Ukraine and received temporary legal status in the U.S. She and her family settled near relatives in Frederick, Maryland, where her husband got a job in his field. But now she worries their status will be revoked.

“I’m willing to go home when it’s safe,” she said, noting her former city is under Russian control. “I have nothing in Ukraine now if I go back.”

The courts are still weighing in

Lawsuits against the Trump administration have been filed over its immigration policies, with one judge ruling in favor of three faith-based resettlement agencies. In a recent court filing, administration lawyers argued that initial refugee benefits are “not required by law.” They indicated it would take months to comply with a court order to restart the program.

This week, Global Refuge received some federal reimbursements for its work during the Biden administration. Those funds came through the Department of Health and Human Services. Global Refuge has not received federal payments for work done since late January, and it has not received reimbursements for the 90-day aid offered through the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Resettlement can be difficult under any circumstances. Rahmani remembers the first lonely weeks in his new town, when he spotted another Afghan man. He called out to him in Dari, his own language, and cried when they hugged.

He now knows of at least 10 recently arrived Afghan families living nearby, and many are also struggling. With his English skills, he often serves as their translator, helping them at appointments.

More and more, Rahmani thinks he will have to go back to Afghanistan, despite the danger.

“If I don’t have the home rent, then I don’t have any other choice,” he said.

At least if something happened to him in Afghanistan, his relatives would be there to care for his wife and children.

“But in the United States,” he said, “there is nobody who would take care of my family.”

Associated Press journalist Gary Fields contributed from Washington.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Andrew Sullivan thinks of the people his organization has helped resettle in America, one particular story comes to mind: an Afghan man in a wheelchair who was shot through the neck by a member of the Taliban for helping the U.S. during its war in Afghanistan.

“I just think … Could I live with myself if we send that guy back to Afghanistan?” said Sullivan, executive director of No One Left Behind. “And I thankfully don’t have to because he made it to northern Virginia.”

The charitable organization of U.S. military veterans, Afghans who once fled their country and volunteers in the U.S. is stepping in to help Afghans like that man in the wheelchair who are at risk of being stranded overseas. Their efforts come after the Trump administration took steps to hinder Afghans who helped America’s war effort in trying to resettle in the U.S.

President Donald Trump in January suspended programs that buy flights for those refugees and cut off aid to the groups that help them resettle in the U.S. Hundreds who were approved for travel to the U.S. had visas but few ways to get here. If they managed to buy a flight, they had little help when they arrived.

The White House and State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, the situation for Afghans has become more tenuous in some of the places where many have temporarily settled. Pakistan, having hosted millions of refugees, has in recent years removed Afghans from its country. increased deportations. An agreement that made Albania a waystation for Afghans expires in March, Sullivan said.

Hovering over all of this is the fear that the Trump administration may announce a travel ban that could cut off all access from Afghanistan. In an executive order signed on Inauguration Day, Trump told key Cabinet members to submit a report within 60 days that identifies countries with vetting so poor that it would “warrant a partial or full suspension” of travelers from those countries to the U.S.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Monday that the review was ongoing and no list had been finalized.

But groups that work with Afghans are worried.

When funding was suspended, No One Left Behind stepped in. Their goal is to make sure Afghans with State Department visas don’t get stuck overseas. Other organizations — many who got their start helping Afghans during the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul in 2021 — are doing the same.

To qualify for this visa, Afghans must prove they worked for the U.S. for at least one year. That means tracking down documentation from former supervisors, who were often affiliated with companies no longer in business. They also undergo extensive vetting and medical checks.

“Our view was, OK, we’ve got to act immediately to try and help these people,” said Sullivan. “We’ve been in kind of an all-out sprint.”

It also launched a website where visa holders can share information, giving Sullivan’s group a starting point to figure out where they might live in the U.S.

Sullivan and the organization’s “ambassadors” — Afghans and Iraqis who already have emigrated to the U.S., many through the special immigrant visa program — have gone to Albania and Qatar to help stranded Afghans.

Aqila is one of those ambassadors who went to Albania. The Associated Press is identifying Aqila by her first name because her family in Afghanistan is still at risk.

Aqila said many of the families didn’t know what would happen when they arrived in America. Would they be homeless? Abandoned? One man feared he’d end up alone in the airport parking lot because his contact in America — a long-haul trucker — couldn’t come pick him up. She assured him that someone would be there.

They gave them cards with contact information for attorneys. They printed papers with information about their rights in English, Dari, and Pashto.

No One Left Behind reached out to family members and friends in the U.S. to help with the transition when they landed in America.

Mohammad Saboor, a father of seven children, worked as an electrician and A/C technician with international and U.S. forces for 17 years. Two months ago, he and his family boarded a plane to Albania in anticipation of soon being able to go to America. They landed in California on March 12, exhausted but safe

The next day he and his family explored their new apartment in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova.

The family picked the suburb in the hope that the large Afghan population in the Sacramento area would help them get settled and find work. He envisions a bright future in America, where his kids can go to school and eventually give back to the country that took his family in. Arriving in the U.S., he said, gave them a “great feeling.”

“I believe that now we can live in a 100% peaceful environment,” he said.

Sullivan said he hopes there will be exceptions for Afghans in the special immigrant visa program if a travel ban is imposed. They’ve been thoroughly vetted, he said, and earned the right to be here.

“These are folks that actually served shoulder-to-shoulder with American troops and diplomats for 20 years,” he said.

Aqila, the Afghan ambassador, said it’s stressful to hear stories of what people went through in Afghanistan. But the reward comes when she sees photos of those who have arrived in America.

“You can see the hope in their eyes,” she said. “It’s nice to be human. It’s nice be kind to each other.”