AI Generated Image (not the actual court order in this case)
A federal judge in New York on Tuesday temporarily barred Afghan deportations to Afghanistan or Pakistan, in an order that runs through Saturday, Nov. 7. U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni built the temporary restraining order on the government’s own words: ICE told the court it had no chartered or commercial flights planned to either country this week, and she ordered officials to keep it that way, ABC News reported.
The order came on the day a charter described in an ICE sworn declaration had been scheduled to leave Louisiana. It turns a statement by government lawyers into a court command, which matters: a representation at a hearing can be revised, while violating a restraining order can lead to contempt proceedings.
According to ABC News, the order directs the government to “comply with and adhere to the representations made by Deputy Assistant Director George through counsel for Defendants that there are no planned or confirmed chartered or commercial flights for the purposes of deporting Afghan nationals to Afghanistan or to Pakistan for the duration of this Temporary Restraining Order and that it takes weeks to make such arrangements.” Law360 described the order as “cementing the government’s assurances.” Neither outlet’s public reporting identified the case name or docket number, or said whether the order protects only the people who sued or a wider group of Afghan detainees. That detail will decide how far the order reaches.
A promise with a short shelf life
The government gave up little. It had already said no flight was ready, and its statement that removal arrangements “take weeks” suggests the earliest realistic departure was beyond Saturday anyway. The practical effect is to buy time for a fuller hearing, most likely on a preliminary injunction, where the government can be expected to lean on the jurisdictional limits that have already defeated some Afghan detainees. Federal law at 8 U.S.C. 1252(g) bars district courts from hearing claims arising from decisions to execute removal orders. A federal judge in El Paso cited a lack of jurisdiction on Oct. 29 when she refused to halt one Afghan man’s removal, CBS News reported.
The detainees’ strongest argument concerns the route, not the removal orders themselves. ICE’s Oct. 30 declaration, the subject of earlier coverage of the ICE filing on the onward leg, said the plane’s final destination would be Pakistan “with further transport onward to Afghanistan,” according to CBS News. For anyone who holds withholding of removal or Convention Against Torture protection as to Afghanistan, a stop in Pakistan followed by an overland transfer raises an obvious question: whether the government is doing indirectly what the protection order forbids.
How many people are at stake has been unsettled since the Pakistan route first surfaced. A U.S. official told CBS News that the plan covered nearly 200 Afghans, while ABC News said a Justice Department filing indicated dozens could be deported. Neither number appears in a public court record. The wider pool is larger. When DHS ended Afghanistan’s Temporary Protected Status, its May 2025 Federal Register notice estimated about 11,700 beneficiaries, roughly 3,600 of whom had been approved for permanent residence as of April 7, 2025.
Pressure from Capitol Hill, silence from ICE
“A week ago, there was a plane. Today, the government told a federal judge there isn’t one,” Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, told ABC News, calling the order “a reprieve, not a resolution.” Rep. Scott Peters said on a press call Tuesday that sending Afghans to the Taliban “breaks that promise” the country made to those who helped U.S. forces, echoing the letter from 66 lawmakers urging Rubio and Mullin to halt the flight. ICE told ABC News it does not “comment on prospective removal operations.” DHS had earlier said that people sent to a third country “receive notice and assurances prior to their removal,” CBS News reported.
Three things will show whether this is a pause or a turning point: whether Judge Caproni extends the order or sets a preliminary injunction schedule before it lapses, whether the government seeks relief from the Second Circuit, and whether ICE books a new charter once the restriction ends. The pattern elsewhere is that judges have been more willing to order releases and returns than to stop planes in advance, as in the order to retrieve a man deported to the Central African Republic and the wave of re-arrests after habeas wins. A narrow restraining order built on the government’s own timeline fits that pattern, and it postpones the harder legal fight rather than settling it.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: ABC News, Judge temporarily blocks deportation of Afghan nationals (Nov. 3, 2026); Law360, NY Judge Bars Afghan Removals To Pakistan, For Now (Nov. 3, 2026); CBS News, ICE planning to deport Afghans through Pakistan (Nov. 2, 2026); 8 U.S.C. 1252, Judicial review of orders of removal; DHS, Termination of the Designation of Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status, 90 FR 20309 (May 13, 2025).
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