A federal judge Monday ordered immigration officials to immediately release an Afghan immigrant who helped U.S. troops fight the Taliban before moving to Boulder County.
Mohammad Ali Dadfar, who lived in Louisville with his wife and four children after fleeing Afghanistan, was picked up in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement sting while working as a long-haul truck driver. He has been held in a detention center in Missouri for nearly two months following his arrest at a weigh station along an interstate highway in Indiana.
“Ali’s family is overwhelmed and excited to see him,” said Marissa Seuc-Hester, who leads a volunteer ministry for immigrants at Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Louisville and had helped the family with housing and other support. “Our community is celebrating this just order and cannot wait to welcome him home.”
Within hours of the judge’s order, by late Monday afternoon, Dadfar walked out of the detention center in Missouri. Friends in Louisville made arrangements to pick him up, and others, including his wife, were driving east to meet him, Seuc-Hester said.
U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool, in the Western District of Missouri, ruled that Dadfar’s constitutional right to due process was violated and that he is entitled to immediate release.
Dadfar’s attorney in Colorado, Tiago Guevara of Longmont, said the ruling was “one more step toward a just result in this case.”
“Mr. Dadfar is a hardworking family man who has followed the law at every turn,” he said. “ICE broke its own laws and regulations to arrest him and take him away from his family.”
Dadfar and his family escaped Afghanistan “in fear for their lives,” the court order says. He followed the path toward legal asylum, first by presenting himself and his family to border patrol authorities in San Ysidro, California, in June 2024. They were admitted into the United States and given a date for immigration court.
Dadfar was granted humanitarian parole, which does not expire until June 2026. He had applied for asylum in August 2024 and was scheduled to appear in immigration court in Colorado in February. He also has a work permit that is valid until June, according to court records, and had obtained a commercial driver’s license to work as a truck driver.
Dadfar was driving through Michigan City, Indiana, and had stopped at a weigh station along Interstate 94. “Then, without a warrant or any warning, Mr. Dadfar was detained and arrested,” the order states.
He was held for five hours at the weigh station, then taken into ICE custody by Chicago immigration agents. He was later sent to a detention center in Missouri.
Dadfar had worked in the Afghan Army for 14 years and provided security for U.S. soldiers. He and his wife, three daughters and one son fled Afghanistan in 2021, after U.S. troops had withdrawn and the Taliban returned to power.
They traveled first to Iran, and then to Brazil when the Brazilian government offered visas to Afghan refugees. After about a year in South America, the family made a treacherous journey through the jungle of the Darien Gap to reach the U.S. border.
They settled in Louisville, where Dadfar’s brother already lived.
The judge determined that there were no grounds for the federal government to terminate Dadfar’s humanitarian parole “because he has not departed from the U.S., and his parole has not expired.” He was also not given any written notice explaining the basis for revoking his immigration status, as required by law.
The federal government violated Dadfar’s rights to “freedom from imprisonment” and to have a hearing in court, the judge ruled. The “underlying facts” of his asylum claim have not changed and he was in possession of a valid document proving his status, the court order states.
“There was no evidence from his conduct that he was a flight risk,” the judge wrote. “He was simply performing his duties as a truck driver in Indiana (far from any border).”
The habeas corpus case was filed against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the acting assistant field officer for ICE in Chicago, and the sheriff of Greene County, Missouri, where Dadfar was detained.