RASC News Agency: In a stark embodiment of the Trump administration’s revived hardline immigration agenda, a controversial new plan seeks to redirect $250 million from the United States’ foreign aid budget to facilitate the large-scale deportation of refugees specifically targeting individuals from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Syria, and other conflict-ridden nations. According to internal disclosures reported by The Washington Post, Afghanistani refugees despite facing credible threats to life and liberty under the Taliban’s authoritarian rule are expected to be among the first forcibly expelled under this initiative. Previously, the Trump administration had announced an offer of $1,000 to asylum seekers who agreed to leave the United States voluntarily. Yet this financial incentive thinly veils the coercive essence of the policy, which exploits the vulnerability of displaced populations, especially those who have fled the Taliban’s repressive regime. The measure starkly contradicts the U.S. government’s professed commitment to human rights and international protection obligations.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of State formalized a joint agreement earmarking $250 million from the foreign assistance fund to implement this deportation strategy. Although the text of the agreement refrains from naming specific nationalities, documents reviewed by The Washington Post confirm that the scheme would affect approximately 200,000 Ukrainians, over 500,000 Haitians, and an undisclosed number of Afghanistani refugees. This initiative proceeds despite the U.S. State Department’s own travel advisories warning against visiting countries such as Ukraine and Haiti due to extreme security risks. Even more alarming is the disregard shown toward Afghanistani refugees, more than 10,000 of whom had been granted temporary protection status in the U.S. a designation the government is now rescinding, demanding that these individuals return to a nation ruled by a regime notorious for public floggings, gender apartheid, and ethnic persecution.
Under the Biden administration, both Ukrainians and Haitians had been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS), allowing them to legally reside in the U.S. until conditions in their home countries improved. Ukrainians received TPS in 2022 in response to the Russian invasion, while Haitians have retained the designation since the devastating 2010 earthquake, with multiple extensions granted due to unrelenting crises. Afghanistani refugees, however, have not been extended the same safeguard raising serious questions about discriminatory enforcement and geopolitical calculus. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed the existence of the deportation framework, noting that it was drafted between April and May of this year. She stated that a final decision regarding TPS for Ukraine and Haiti has yet to be made. Nonetheless, McLaughlin emphasized that DHS and the State Department “are coordinating to execute the President’s directive to repurpose foreign aid funds for the voluntary repatriation of individuals unlawfully residing in the United States.”
In a parallel statement, the State Department acknowledged that it is evaluating the provision of “financial incentives” to encourage so-called voluntary returns. However, human rights advocates argue that such returns are rarely voluntary in any meaningful sense particularly in the case of Afghanistani refugees who risk arrest, torture, or extrajudicial execution upon re-entering Taliban-controlled territory. This proposal represents a perilous fusion of domestic populist policy and international negligence. By weaponizing humanitarian aid to serve domestic political ends, the U.S. undermines its moral authority and further endangers the very individuals it once pledged to protect. Moreover, it implicitly emboldens authoritarian regimes most notably the Taliban by forcing their victims back into the arms of the very oppressors they fled.
The redirection of development assistance toward deportation logistics not only erodes America’s global standing but also sends a chilling message: that survival under tyranny is not a sufficient reason for sanctuary. As the Taliban continues its campaign of repression silencing women, brutalizing ethnic minorities, and dismantling the last vestiges of civil society the Trump administration’s scheme threatens to turn foreign aid into a mechanism of forced compliance with barbarism.
