SEATTLE — From her home in Tacoma, S has watched the flurry of immigration policy changes issued by the Trump administration in recent days with horror.

The Afghan woman was granted asylum in 2022 and applied for a green card in 2023, but has not received an update on her application since last December, when she fulfilled a request for medical records. She fears that application, now paused, may ultimately be denied, and that her asylum status, under new scrutiny, may be terminated.

If her case is litigated, “I would say to the judge, or whoever decides, that I would want to die here,” said S, who asked to go by her first initial because she fears speaking out could negatively impact her immigration case or result in attacks from the public.

“I will definitely be killed (if deported), but if I had the choice of dying here —” she stopped, her voice catching in her throat.

In the wake of the shooting of two National Guard members last week, allegedly carried out by an Afghan national, the Trump administration has begun a sweeping crackdown on immigration that could drastically alter the lives of immigrants already living in Washington state and those abroad seeking to come to the U.S.

Local advocates and service providers say the effects are already rippling across the state, as immigrants and their loved ones frantically call attorneys, scrape together legal funds, assemble personal documents and anxiously wait for any news about their cases.

The changes, by far the most widespread disruption on legal immigration since Trump’s return to office, were detailed in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy memo posted online Tuesday.

All asylum decisions will be halted for people currently in the U.S., and asylum approvals issued during the Biden administration will be reviewed. The issuance of special immigrant visas to Afghans who assisted U.S. forces is suspended. Immigration applications, like requests for green cards or naturalization, filed by nationals from 19 countries, mostly in the Middle East or Africa, will be paused. And officials say they will also reexamine the green cards and immigration benefits already issued to people from those countries.

The exact number of Washington residents — including lawful permanent residents, refugees, those with asylum status and people seeking asylum — who will be affected by the new policies is difficult to calculate but easily in the tens of thousands.

Within 90 days, USCIS “will prioritize a list for review, interview, re-interview, and referral to ICE and other law enforcement agencies as appropriate,” according to the Tuesday memo.

'Not much we can do'

S moved to the U.S. in 2015 to attend university on a student visa, she said, inspired by her readings at a U.S.-backed Lincoln Learning Center, including “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank and books on the women’s rights movement.

“Women in these books were so much different, and were able to do so much more than I was,” said S, who graduated in 2019.

Once, when she returned to Afghanistan during college for a visit in 2018, she was physically assaulted over her work supporting women’s education there, she said. S and her parents also regularly received threatening calls. Things worsened in 2020 as Taliban activities increased in Afghanistan, she said. The killing of a friend, human rights worker Fatima “Natasha” Khalil, solidified her decision to apply for asylum.

“I suffered at the hands of the Taliban, and now I’m being labeled as a terrorist,” S said.

In federal fiscal year 2024 alone, which ended in September 2024, more than 12,500 refugees and other humanitarian immigrants made Washington home, including over 3,200 from Afghanistan. More than 32,000 people in the state obtained lawful permanent resident status in fiscal year 2023, according to the most recent publicly available USCIS data, including nearly 3,500 from the 19 “countries of concern” targeted by the new mandates.

The 19 “countries of concern identified by USCIS are those under previously announced travel restrictions: Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Yemen.

At Asian Counseling and Referral Service in Seattle, at least one Afghan client had his citizenship interview canceled this week, said Alexandra Olins, director of employment and citizenship services. A client from Sierra Leone on the cusp of citizenship was told her oath ceremony, scheduled for Friday, was canceled.

“They got no explanation, no explanation about next steps, and their lives are just hanging in the balance,” Olins said. “It’s just so cruel, and there’s no benefit from it. … It’s just this collective blanket punishment.”

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has in recent days been reaching out to Afghan clients “to let them know we will continue standing by them,” said Executive Director Malou Chávez.

Beyond that, she said, “there’s not much we can do. We have to wait to see what steps the administration will take.” The nonprofit runs a project, currently serving 200 clients, helping Afghans apply for legal protections such as asylum, special immigrant visas and green cards.

How the Trump administration will review so many immigration cases and reexamine green cards remains uncertain. For years, USCIS has struggled to process a massive backlog of applications and petitions.

“There’s lack of clarity,” Chávez said.

There are processes for taking away immigrants’ lawful permanent resident status if they commit certain crimes or their green cards are found to have been granted in error, say because they misrepresented something in their application.

The removal of green cards cannot be done wholesale, Chávez said. The administration has to “go through every case and try to find a reason.”

'In a state of terror'

USCIS said the increased scrutiny and widespread halt on immigration applications for people from “high-risk countries of concern” is necessary in the wake of the Washington, D.C. shooting on Thanksgiving eve that left one National Guard soldier dead and another wounded.

The suspect in that shooting, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, is a 29-year-old Afghan man who entered the country in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program created to help Afghan allies flee after the Taliban takeover. Lakanwal, who served in a secretive, CIA-backed unit, was living in Bellingham with his wife and five children and was granted asylum in April.

“In light of identified concerns and the threat to the American people, USCIS has determined that a comprehensive re-review, potential interview, and re-interview of all aliens from high-risk countries of concern who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021 is necessary,” the agency stated in the Tuesday memo.

Immigration advocates note many of the groups targeted under these new rules have already gone through extensive, yearslong vetting by federal officials. Refugees, for example, must prove they face persecution in their home country before they’re approved to enter the U.S., and undergo multiple rounds of interviews, background checks, medical screenings and more.

Meetra Alokozay, executive director of Sahar, a Seattle-based nonprofit that supports secret girls education programs in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, said the prospect of another round of vetting is anxiety-producing even for those, like herself, who have nothing to hide.

Alokozay, who was born in Afghanistan and, with her family, moved to Pakistan so she and her sister could get an education, came to the U.S. in 2018 as a Fulbright scholar and now has a green card. Before it was approved, authorities got her fingerprints and did a background check, she said.

“I'm more worried about people who are still waiting for a decision for their asylum,” she said. Many are in limbo and fearful they might be sent back to a country where they’re at risk, she added.

'Even citizens are scared'

In Bellingham and greater Whatcom County, Afghans are “living in a state of terror right now,” said Jeremy Dorrough, executive director of Racial Unity Now, a civic organization dedicated to combating systemic racism.

Being repatriated to Afghanistan would be a death sentence for many Afghans whom Dorrough has spoken with, because they were allies for the U.S. before the military withdrew in 2021.

Many of the Afghan immigrants who have resettled in Whatcom County only have temporary permission to be in the U.S. that could expire in a year or more, Dorrough said. Community members have reported seeing their friends and family members' asylum claims halted in the past few days, he said.

Eiman, a U.S. citizen living in Seattle who emigrated from Afghanistan in 2019, said her parents and siblings have already secured their asylum status. But with their pending green card applications now paused, her mother is terrified to leave the house.

“People are totally scared and afraid to go out,” Eiman said, who asked to use only her first name for fear of negatively impacting her family’s immigration applications. “My mom wanted to go to Costco yesterday, and she asked, ‘Can you buy groceries for me, because I feel scared?’”

She knows of several Afghan nationals with green cards who have canceled their holiday plans to visit family members abroad, Eiman said, fearing they will be barred from returning to the U.S. The return of rampant Islamophobia and scapegoating, similar to what Muslims and those often misidentified as Muslim (like Sikh men who wear turbans) experienced after 9/11, is an ever-present fear, Eiman said.

Afghans are not the only immigrant group that has been specifically targeted under the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown. Trump, who called Somali immigrants “garbage” Tuesday, launched a major immigration operation in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region targeting undocumented Somali immigrants this week.

Farhiya Mohamed, executive director of the Somali Family Safety Task Force in Seattle, said the president’s bigoted rhetoric and slew of immigration policy changes have left many confused and alarmed. She said her organization has started to reach out to legal experts for advice and organize meetings for community members to share updates.

“Even citizens are scared, saying we don’t know what’s going on,” she said, noting many live in mixed-status families. “Thirty years we’ve been here, we haven’t done anything.”

For now, immigrants across Washington remain on high alert for additional updates and guidance from immigration officials.

S, the Tacoma woman from Afghanistan, said she used to have nightmares every night she would be deported before she was granted asylum. When she won her case, she felt immense relief: “OK, I’m safe right now,” she recalled.

But that feeling of security has begun slipping away, she said. The nightmares have returned.

©2025 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.