Back in Afghanistan, Mohammad Ali Dadfar worked alongside the U.S. government fighting against the Taliban as a security official in the Afghan Army.
He joined U.S. troops as they traveled from province to province, attempting to hold back the armed rebellion. And after U.S. forces withdrew from the country, and the capital city of Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, Dadfar feared he and his family would be murdered.
It took three years for the family of six to journey to the United States, where they applied for asylum and settled in Colorado. Dadfar, who had a permit that authorized him to work in the United States, initially got a job as an insulation installer in Boulder County, then studied and received a commercial driver’s license this fall to become a long-haul truck driver.
Last month, as Dadfar drove a truckload of supplies through Indiana, he was taken by masked ICE agents after he was forced to strip by the roadside and handcuffed. He has been locked in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Missouri for 26 days.
Dadfar, who had been working as a truck driver for only a few weeks, was caught up in what ICE officials are calling “Operation Midway Blitz,” a Chicago-based effort to prevent “alien threats to public safety.” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said 223 people were taken into custody in a “successful operation” with the Indiana State Police targeting truck drivers near the Illinois state line.
Noem’s news release said some of the people taken into custody were connected to crimes, including drug trafficking and driving under the influence, but she did not say how many of the 223 were accused of illegal activities. The truck drivers were issued commercial driver’s licenses by “sanctuary states,” including Illinois, she said. ICE had not yet responded to a request Thursday from The Colorado Sun for more information.
Dadfar is not accused of any crime and is following the legal path to asylum, said his wife, who did not want her name used because she is afraid that she and her children will become targets of immigration officials or anti-immigrant groups. She spoke to The Colorado Sun through a Dari interpreter, another Afghan who fled to Colorado after the Taliban returned to power.
“It’s very sad and disappointing at the same time,” she said. “My husband worked for 14 or 15 years to fight the Taliban. We had a really hard time coming from Afghanistan and getting here to the United States. Most of our lives have been under war, and now that we’re here, they detained my husband. I’m sad for me and my kids. They need their father. They need their dad to be with them.”
Family fled Afghanistan to Iran after the fall of Kabul
The family had been doing well in Louisville, where the four children, ages 4, 7, 9 and 11, were attending school, learning English and making friends. Three of the children are girls, who would not have been able to go to school beyond elementary grades in Afghanistan. The family had received support from Christ the Servant Lutheran Church, which helped them find housing. Life was starting to feel normal for the first time in years. The kids had just visited a pumpkin patch.
Now, when Dadfar calls once a day from the detention center, he tells his children he is hauling loads, not that he has been locked up.
Dadfar, 37, was at a weigh station beside the highway in Indiana, talking to his brother on the phone, when he said masked authorities were signaling him to stop. He quickly hung up.
The next time Dadfar’s family heard from him, a day later, he was in a detention center. He described to his wife that he was ordered by the ICE agents to take off his clothes and was asked whether he had a document to prove he was in the country legally. He told them he did, but he said the agents did not look at it.
Later, when Dadfar had his first court appearance, he saw a court document that was marked “yes” to a question about whether it was safe for him to return to his home country.
“But they never asked him this question at the court or at the detention center,” Dadfar’s wife said. “He is not safe if he goes back to Afghanistan. The Taliban are now looking for people like that, who worked for the government, who basically killed or fought against the Taliban. If he goes back, they will get him.”
Dadfar was threatened with his life, she said, as Taliban militants began taking over smaller cities on their way to Kabul, which fell back under Taliban control in August 2021. The family lived in Mazar, and Dadfar fled Mazar for Kabul as the Taliban entered their town. He was in Kabul when the U.S. government filled planes with evacuees, airlifting them to safety. Dadfar was at the airport, but did not get a seat.
Instead, the family went to Iran, traveling for 15 days through Pakistan and sleeping in a mountain camp. They lived in Iran for a year and a half. “Iran is very cruel to Afghan immigrants,” Dadfar’s wife said. “My kids couldn’t go to school. The Iranian people did not have good manners with me or with my family going anywhere in Iran.”
When they heard Brazil was accepting Afghan refugees, they applied for visas. Six months later, they arrived in Brazil, where they were placed in a camp with 13 families in one house, with four families sharing a bathroom, she said. They stayed in Brazil for a year, struggling to access community resources that would help them find work and housing.
“We decided to move to the United States for a better future, a bright future for myself and also for my kids,” Dadfar’s wife said. “Even though we heard that the way from Brazil to the U.S. is not easy, that not everyone can make it, we decided to go.”
The journey from Brazil to the U.S.-Mexico border took two months, including six days walking through the jungle in Panama. Their youngest daughter nearly drowned in a raging river as Dadfar carried a pack on his back and his daughter on his shoulders. “I saw dead bodies there, like six or seven dead bodies,” Dadfar’s wife said. “Maybe they died because of hunger. Maybe they died because of snakes. There were so many snakes there. I saw them all with my own eyes. It was the hardest time of my life, but we still kept going.”
By the time they reached the other side of the Darién Gap, the children had sores on their skin and infections in their eyes. They were starving. The youngest girl is still afraid to swim, even in a pool.
Three years after fleeing Afghanistan, the family reached the U.S. border. They scheduled an appointment with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection using the CBP One app, then waited in Mexico until it was their turn to explain their case for asylum to border patrol authorities.
They were interviewed, submitted to fingerprints and other biometrics to record their identities, and given a court date. They received one night in a hotel, with hot food, and were told to contact Dadfar’s brother in Colorado.
Dadfar’s brother paid for the family’s travel to Colorado, where they arrived in July 2024.
Boulder County residents have helped a wave of Afghan immigrants beginning in 2021
The family joined a contingent of Afghan people in Boulder County who fled their home country to escape the Taliban, an ultraconservative regime that prohibits teenage girls from going to school, banned social media, and for a few days in September, shut down the internet and cellphone service.
Several Afghan families came to Louisville and Lafayette four years ago as refugees, a separate immigration process that is handled by the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and uses resettlement agencies or private sponsors to welcome newcomers and provide initial housing.
Marissa Seuc-Hester, who leads a volunteer ministry for immigrants at Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Louisville, helped Dadfar’s brother. Then she helped Dadfar’s family. The family was “fully independent” for the past six months — until Oct. 10, when Dadfar was detained.
Seuc-Hester was infuriated by the news, which she learned in a call from Dadfar’s wife. “There are no criminal charges, no reason,” she said. “It has nothing to do with him particularly.”
Dadfar has a legal work permit and a pending case for asylum, a process that typically takes years and requires multiple appearances in civil immigration court.
When the family arrived in Colorado, the church helped them get into an apartment and enroll in school. Dadfar found work in construction, and his wife worked overnight shifts at a King Soopers. In recent months, Dadfar trained to become a truck driver, and his wife got her driver’s license, a car and a new job in retail, Seuc-Hester said. “They are just like every other family,” she said. “They are working. They are enjoying life, walking and biking to school. The kids are making friends and learning English and coming out of their shells.”
After so many years of war, and then a journey that terrified the children and nearly broke them, they were starting over.
“It’s just layer after layer of hardship for this family,” Seuc-Hester said.
Kate Leslie, who helped 12 Afghan families relocate to Boulder County and hosted two families in her home, called the detention of Dadfar a “violation of his civil and political rights.”
She compared the masked ICE agents to the Taliban and said the detention of an Afghan Army official who helped the United States during the war is “going to be incredibly distasteful to veterans and the military community.”
“It’s appalling,” said Leslie, who did not know Dadfar. “It’s an abdication of our responsibilities.”