What we voted for?
No, Ed, not this Ice
Seems like my feeds keep handing me stories about the current ICE crackdown in which folks are detained or even deported who shouldn’t be.
Now, we all voted for someone to do something concrete about immigration – it was totally out of control, too many of the wrong sort got in (and have more or less stayed in) and that needs to stop. Good on the Administration for slowing the border-jumping criminals to at least some extent.
But I am a tad concerned that ICE is going above and beyond that mandate. I see story after story about immigrants trying to do it right, clean records, have been working through our (convoluted, incredibly dumb-ass process) and yet are getting arrested, shipped across the country to confinement centers literally thousands of miles away – and they are the GOOD guys. Didn’t we vote to ship out the MS-13, the narcotraficantes, the folks that NEED to go away – yet we are constantly hearing about businesses being raided, their employees (who apparently have legit clearance via I-9), taken away – are these the folks we should be seeing getting outprocessed?
Case in point – Sayed Naser. No criminal record in Afghanistan or the US – and he was one of our interpreters in Afghanistan. The kind we here at TAH Raised hell about getting admitted quickly, because in Afghanistan they have a big lethal target on their back – and they earned it working for us.
Naser was legally paroled into the U.S in 2024, according to his lawyer, Brian McGoldrick. In addition to an active asylum case, he has a pending Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) case because of his long history supporting the U.S. military. SIVs are provided to foreign nationals who worked with U.S. military forces in war zones including Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Naser has no criminal record in the U.S. or Afghanistan, according to court records reviewed by CBS News.
This is the kind of guy we want to keep, no? And if nothing else, we have to because every time we use a native and abandon them, we weaken. And in all honesty, we have been doing it pretty constantly for 50 years.
In a video obtained by CBS News, two unidentified ICE agents put Sayed Naser in handcuffs and escorted him from the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego after he attended a mandatory immigration hearing on Wednesday, June 11.
“For more than three years I worked for the U.S. military back in my home country,” Naser said in the video as the masked officers took him into custody. “I came here to make a better life. I didn’t know this was going to happen like this for me.”
But after the U.S. withdrew from the country in August 2021, his partnership with American forces put targets on the backs of Naser and his family. In 2023, Taliban fighters killed his brother and abducted his father at a family wedding. The attack drove Naser out of the country and forced his wife and children to flee their home.
“I cannot return to Afghanistan under any circumstances because I am accused of collaborating with U.S. forces. From the Taliban’s perspective, anyone who worked with foreign forces during the past 20 years is a spy, an infidel, and must be killed,” Naser wrote in his asylum declaration. His family remains in hiding outside of Afghanistan. CBS News
Secretary Noem revoked Temporary Protected Status for 11,000 Afghans who had fled to the US. There are a further 100,000 still in Afghanistan waiting to get out before the Taliban does something ugly.
They say the current catchall is that asylum was “Improvidently issued”, so many aren’t really eligible. So which is it – was DHS incompetent under the last administration? Or this one? Or…both? I do think they are to get Noem and Trump as high a body count as possible… they kinda remind me of Vietnam commanders claiming anything they could as a kill to keep their commanders (all the way up the chain) thinking we were winning.
Having seen friends and family deal with Immigration, DHS et al before, my money is on option three.
Let’s see mass deportations of MS-13 members. Tren de Aragua? Sure. Illegals who happen to be felons? Absolutely. People trying to actually comply with the laws ? Ah, no.
Category: Illegal Immigrants, International Affairs
Yes, the media is doing its job pointing to the 1/100k exceptions and ignoring all the real benefits of kicking out everyone else who isn’t supposed to be here like lower crime rates, more housing and a better economy.
So far as interpreters go I am thinking there is more to the story. I didn’t serve in Afghanistan but I did assist several interpreters to immigrate to the US from Iraq. The paperwork nutroll was incredible and required the approval of the first two star in the chain of command before it even went to immigration. So I am curious what the flawed process was, and would like to see that.
Surely someone or someone’s can step up to provide backing for his claim. And since the story just broke in the last day or so, I would imagine it to take another day or so before someone who does know him, or was involved in getting him out of Afghanistan to hear about it and start making their voices heard.
I am curious though as to what govt run or provided program, or law passed has ever run as intended.
Maybe van Hollan (?) can go to wherever this guy is being held (with the media in tow) and hoist a few Afghanistan brews or beverages to show his support.
I’m not buying all the ‘they’re getting the wrong people’ because you know to have your resident alien card/green card or other documentation like a driver’s license/passport and what not on you. I can say with fair amount of certainty that are people that came in under Biden who think they’re doing it the right way. The last Regime was moving people along without any regards to them being properly processed because the whole scheme was MASS AMNESTY. Why start the paperwork for the millions that won’t need it. If you’ve been in this a country for a decade and working with fake SSN/Green Card, you know you’re not in the system doing the right way. My neighbor cam from Trinidad, and him and his wife did it the right way. I also so know some Russians, Ukrainians, and Bosnians that did it the right way. I don’t trust the sob stories coming out of the media. How can you trust ANYTHING they say now?
Agreed. As presented, it doesn’t add up. Gotta be some missing details or a mistake that will be corrected.
I know what I voted for:
Go back and find what Tom Homan has said about the people who he will work to deport.
First, the criminals. They will be gone. Then those who are not “criminals”, but who broke the law by crossing the border illegally. Right now, they have the option of self-deporting which gives them the opportunity to apply for entry to the US at a later date. If they make the decision to stay, well then, if caught and deported, they cannot legally enter the US again.
That’s what I voted for. I’m the son of Irish immigrants. If any of my many family members came here illegally, I would be the first one to say deport them. Hell, my wife is German and her brother broke the law and was arrested. Right from the start, I told his lawyer to boot his ass out.
This is a big operation and errors will be made. Cases like the one of the Afghan man will be hashed out and he will remain in our country as he should. We have to cut ICE some slack in this. And remember, that the opposition will amplify and harp on endlessly any mistake the government makes.
Good comment. As we progress, my thoughts are that the “algorithms” will spin up the narrative. Thinking back, the “facts” that police were hunting down and focused on one specific group were being “slaughtered in the streets” turned political landscape. Perhaps this should be considered.
Curious as to what the fuck Val Kilmer has to do with this?
Oh, he is the ICEMAN.
Gonna take a long minute to wade thru the 20-30 millions of illegals and, yes, mistakes will be made. We’ve slowed the input down, which is a good thing, but the priority should be getting the KNOWN criminals dahell out. In the case of the Afffy, due it should be fairly simple to verify his support of our troops. The ones still waiting? The Talibans have probably already taken care of as many of those poor folks as they could find. One still has to wonder how many of the ones that were airlifted out at the last minute are truly supporters or are now part of a “sleeper cell” waiting for the call down signal.
I reckon the “next big thing” on this subject will be the talk of exempting illegals that are in the “hospitality”, meat packing, produce picking categories. You know, the ones that work for the Bad Orange Man’s billionaire buds.
It’s a numbers game. If you have a 1% error and are right 99% of the time, that’s better than anybody in law enforcement. So, you deport 1,000,000 people. That means that you will deport 10,000 people wrongly. If you are 99.9% right, you’ll still deport 1,000 people wrongly. When dealing with large numbers, *any* irreducible error seems big, no matter how small it really is.
The solution is to have appeals processes in place. The big question is whether the appeals process should be done *before* or *after* actual deportation. I’m fine with after, generally. Sure, there should be some sort of accelerated appeals path for special cases, and accommodation for countries that are problematic, such as repatriating to Afghanistan. But that’s an issue of fine tuning.
Math is racist.
No, they are NOT the good guys. They are still in the country illegally, breaking laws and sucking taxpayer resources.
They are still the BAD GUYS. Just not AS BAD as the worst.
“I see story after story about immigrants trying to do it right, clean records, have been working through our (convoluted, incredibly dumb-ass process) and yet are getting arrested, shipped across the country to confinement centers literally thousands of miles away – and they are the GOOD guys.”
People with no criminal records are deported all the time, has been this way for decades. They enter illegally, get caught and fight their case with an Immigration proceeding. They will see a judge and try to prove their case. A judge will make a decison, most likely order deported.
Just because you have no criminal record, you still need to enter the proper way.
For some reason, the media is portraying we only deport criminals, there are still thousands of cases in front of immigration judges still going on, who were not criminals, this is not abnormal. Media plays games and tell half the story, there are millions of cases pending, majority are not criminal.
We don’t stop the process.
Of course people without crimes are deported, after a judge makes a decision. Some people are afforded voluntary return if not criminal, can re-apply legally later.
ICE has released a statement saying that he was admitted under the CPB1 App and there is no evidence he assisted the US military in Afghanistan.
Welp, if that is true, then I retract my prior comment. I then wonder about his story of the death of his father and brother at the hands of the Taliban because he worked for us. I suspect that maybe BS, as well.
The folks at Afghan Evac say otherwise:
https://x.com/shawnjvandiver/status/1936080463816221118
They claim to have the records, and that DHS has them too. I’m inclined to think an organization solely focused on relocating Afghan allies to the US has more credibility here than DHS / ICE, but I guess we’ll see.
I have been saying for 4-5 months now, that I support what this Apis doing. Someone had to do something!!
And while I want it to happen, I feel like we should be methodical about it, so that we don’t “throw the baby out with the bath water”.
There is also a lot of Malicious Compliance happening within the government and the military, in hopes of undermining the progress.
I have questions.
If the guy was an interpreter and worked alongside our military in Iraq, Syria, AND Afghanistan, then he speaks Dari, Pashto, Arabic, AND English with sufficient fluency to act as a multilingual interpreter? So, he must have been fairly well educated in Afghanistan, as most speak only enough Arabic to conduct themselves as Muslims.
I’ve been told many times that conversations with elders, Imams, etc., in Afghanistan were nearly exclusively conducted in either Dari or Pashto, with maybe an occasional phrase or word in Arabic. To make it harder on the Americans. So that when talks broke down or were not honored, misunderstandings due to mistranslation could be used as the go-to excuse.
Next question – How did he get to Iraq and Syria from Afghanistan to work with our military? There would be dozens if not scores of members of our military and/or veterans, up and down the various chains of command who could vouch for the guy.
Next question – If he was working alongside our military, those voices would be out there immediately in his defense. Every hour of silence that is clocked adds more weight to the questions of the veracity of his story.
Next question – How the <bleep> can anyone say he had no criminal record in Afghanistan? How can they possibly think they, or anyone, could know that?
Next question – How do they know the guy doesn’t have any criminal record or connection here? He’s living in California, where laws are neither enforced nor prosecuted.
I stand ready to be corrected and will shout from the roof tops in this guy’s defense if this is malicious compliance. I also know the stories of those who worked alongside the interpreters that would put a bullet in them before vouching for them, as they proved to be traitorous – to us – at best.
Last question – If it’s all true, sadly, some mistakes will be made. But to blame those trying to correct past mistakes and infer we abandon the whole effort?
Article says SIV holders worked for us in all those countries, not him specifically. Re his criminal record, same article says evidence supporting his lack of criminal record in either country was submitted to the court and reviewed by CBS.
https://www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/watch/ice-detains-man-who-helped-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan-241930821946
listen at about the three minute mark – his attorney says evidence of his working with the military, and his current vetting, was presented to the court. Indeed, the judge could not proceed without the vetting.
No one is advocating shutting the whole deportation machine down – but if the system has warts in it, they should be corrected, no shuffled under the carpet and denied.
Yes, he entered under Biden – but he filed before arriving, and seems to have been trying to follow the rules. Saying “Biden’s process sucked” doesn’t change that people trying to comply with the process they were told to follow should get to transition to the new process when the administration changes the rules.
Posted this one above, too – the Afghan Evac folks claim to have the records, and he’s legit, and I’m inclined to believe them simply because it’s their mission and their reputation at stake. But I guess we’ll see:
https://x.com/shawnjvandiver/status/1936080463816221118
I think most of us here would agree that this Afghan terp needs to be granted asylum permanently. His assertion that he would surely by murdered by the Taliban for having worked for us is irrefutable. Noem needs to reverse this and release him.
How many interpreters were there?
Late to the discussion, but I pretty much voted to send them all back. Roll them all up, and sort out any mistakes in execution. You are illegal? See ya! Actually, no I won’t see ya because you’ll be gone. And I won’t. Because I’m legal. See the difference?