‘Betrayal’: Afghan Special-Forces Soldier Who Fought with Americans Held for Months in U.S. Detention

It was around 4 a.m. when a Border Patrol agent working in an orchard in south Texas spotted footprints leading away from the Rio Grande.

He followed the prints and soon encountered a man wearing dirty and wet clothes, typical of illegal immigrants crossing that section of the border near Eagle Pass. The border agent approached the man, identified himself, and questioned him, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report detailing the recent encounter.

Unlike most of the migrants crossing the border, this man who swam across the Rio Grande on September 30 was not from South or Central America. He wasn’t from Haiti or Cuba, either.

His name was Abdul Wasi Safi. He was from Afghanistan. He was a former lieutenant and intelligence officer in Afghan’s elite special forces who’d fought alongside American soldiers in the 20-year war in that country. He’d escaped from the Taliban, flown to Brazil, and made the treacherous 1,200-mile journey to the U.S. border where he hoped to make an asylum claim.

In English, Safi explained his fear of being returned to Afghanistan, where Taliban warriors were hunting and killing former special-forces soldiers like him.

But the 27-year-old had not presented himself at an official port of entry. He had no valid entry documents, as required by the Immigration and Nationality Act. He was taken into custody “and will be processed for an Expedited Removal” from the country, the DHS report states.

For three months now, Abdul Wasi Safi — known as Wasi to family and friends — has been in federal custody, charged with the federal misdemeanor of illegally entering the country. He is currently in the custody of U.S. Marshals in a detention center in Eden, Texas.

Supporters, including veterans groups and his older brother — a former interpreter for the U.S. military who is now a citizen living in Houston — say that Safi should have been welcomed into the country whose soldiers he fought alongside. Instead, they say, he is being treated like a criminal. Safi’s older brother, Samiullah, is calling for Safi to be released from federal custody so he can live in Houston with him while Safi awaits a hearing on his asylum claim.

“I want the Biden administration . . . to basically look at his service and appreciate him, and show the world what America stands for, and show that America, just like the promise, we will never leave our allies behind,” Samiullah “Sami” Safi told National Review. “This man came to your door asking for safety, asking for you to accept him. This man is your ally.”

On December 21, a coalition of 23 veterans groups sent a joint letter to President Biden asking that he grant Wasi Safi parolee status while he awaits an asylum hearing. Members of Afghanistan’s special forces “faithfully served America, and not one of them should have to endure a path like this to reach safety,” they wrote.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment on Safi’s case. The State Department declined to comment on the case.

More than a year after the Biden administration’s chaotic and deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, tens of thousands of American allies remain trapped in the country, in constant danger of being caught, tortured, and killed by the Taliban. Critics say the administration is working far too slowly to rescue those allies left behind.

While Afghans like Sami Safi, who worked for the American government or military, were eligible for Special Immigrant Visas to come to the U.S., former members of the now-fallen Afghan military and intelligence community, like Wasi Safi, were not. They are now top targets of the Taliban.

“He’s definitely one of the most high-risk guys out there,” said Ben Owen, chief executive of Flanders Fields, a civilian group that has been part of the volunteer rescue efforts in Afghanistan.

Daniel Elkins, founder of the nonprofit Special Operations Association of America, said he fears what would happen to Safi if the Biden administration deported him to Afghanistan. “We believe not only would he be killed, but we believe that he would surely be tortured and made an example of for those that are sympathetic to the United States,” Elkins said.

He also said that keeping Wasi Safi behind bars with the lingering threat of deportation is a “continuance of the moral injury that the veteran community has experienced since the collapse and withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

“We know that more of our community would be buried in Arlington National Cemetery today if it was not for allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us and fought alongside of us in combat over the last 20 years,” Elkins said. “The fact that it would be even a question that he could be deported is something that is very, very concerning to us.”

‘I Will Not Be Able to Survive’

Wasi Safi grew up Kabul in a large family with four brothers and six sisters, the son of a military trainer who urged his sons to follow his footsteps into the military. “He’s a really die-hard Afghan who loves his country,” Sami Safi said of their father.

Sami Safi said his father was disappointed when he didn’t join the Afghan military and became a translator for U.S. forces instead. But Wasi Safi did listen to his dad, pursuing a military career. According to his brother, he joined the special forces in 2016, graduated from a military academy in India in 2018 as a second lieutenant, and then received combat training from U.S. forces in northern Afghanistan.

Records indicate that he worked as an intelligence officer alongside U.S. soldiers. “He was trusted by all the unit, everybody, because he was putting every effort into work to make sure every soldier going out on a mission comes home alive,” Sami Safi said.

“Wasi Safi was a lieutenant in the KKA [Ktah Khas], which is the most elite of the Afghan special forces,” Owen said. “The KKA guys would be one of the highest targets of the Taliban.”

In August 2021, amid the chaos of the U.S. evacuation, Wasi Safi attempted to get on a flight out of Kabul. He was outside Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 26, 2021, when a suicide bomber affiliated with ISIS-K, an Islamic State offshoot, killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 civilians. He told the Texas Tribune that he was 50 meters away.

When he didn’t escape on the last U.S. flights out, he spoke to his brother, who was living in the U.S. at the time. “I told him, Wasi, now we have to work on a second plan,” Sami Safi said.

Wasi Safi went into hiding, traveling from safehouse to safehouse provided by U.S. veterans’ groups. Sami Safi said he paid $1,200 for a visa so his brother could escape to Pakistan. But when he got there, he found that the conditions weren’t much better for him. He heard that Pakistani intelligence officers were working with the Taliban to identify former Afghan military members. There were rumors of the Taliban patrolling the airport in Pakistan. He heard Afghans were being thrown in prison and disappeared.

“He said, ‘Sami, I will not be able to survive here,’” Sami Safi recalled.

Sami Safi said he started looking for a path to get his brother out of Islamabad and learned of a humanitarian visa that Brazil was offering. Wasi Safi obtained the visa, but he had to make the dangerous journey back to the airport in Kabul to fly to Brazil.

According to a report in the Texas Tribune, Wasi Safi used a fabricated prescription as an excuse to get through Taliban checkpoints, telling them he had to get to Kabul to get medicine. When he was questioned by the Taliban at the airport in Kabul, he claimed he was a student traveling to Brazil, the Tribune reported. In the chaotic withdrawal in August 2021, U.S. forces had left behind systems that the Taliban now use to identify American allies. In his trek to Kabul and then through the airport, Wasi Safi narrowly avoided having his fingerprints scanned, the Tribune reported.

‘They Did Not Have Any Mercy’

Wasi Safi flew to Brazil in late July. His brother said they were hoping that he would have a safe life there. But Sami Safi said that Wasi was beaten up, robbed, and extorted by locals who assumed that because he had come all the way from Afghanistan, he must be wealthy.

Sami Safi said his brother decided to seek asylum in the U.S., under the belief that he would “have a life there” and his “service working with United States special forces” would be valued.

Wasi Safi joined a caravan of migrants traveling to the U.S. border, a trip that took about two months. They traveled through Colombia, and through a 60-mile roadless jungle known as the Darién Gap, where migrants are often preyed upon by gangs and cartels. Sami Safi said that in the jungle, his brother’s group was hunted by men with bows and arrows.

“He saw many people getting killed,” Sami Safi said. “They did not have any mercy. They were just shooting people.”

Wasi Safi told the Tribune that 16 members of their group of about 300 were killed.

Sami Safi said that in Panama, police entered the migrant camp and beat his brother, calling him a terrorist. Wasi Safi told the Tribune that he was stripped naked and had insect-repellent powder thrown into his open wounds. “They treated me very bad,” he told the paper. “They took my food and said it was a bomb, calling me Taliban.”

In Mexico City, Wasi Safi and several other migrants paid a smuggler to drive them to the U.S. border. The smuggler eventually shook them down for money and valuables. Wasi reached the border late at night. He and the other migrants he was with crossed the Rio Grande in the dark.

‘A Betrayal’

Wasi Safi is facing up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $5,000 for illegally entering the country, the Tribune reported. It is unclear if a conviction on the misdemeanor charge could be an impediment to his effort to get asylum. “I don’t believe it prejudices his asylum claim,” Javier Maldonado, a lawyer who was representing Safi, told National Review.

Safi’s next court date is January 10. He has already been denied bail. If he fights the charge, he would remain behind bars for months. If he pleads guilty, he would still likely have to remain in custody while pre-sentencing reports are completed, Maldonado said.

Owen credits Safi for getting himself out of danger in Afghanistan with little assistance. “He grabbed the bull by the horns, and he got his ass, well, to where he is right now,” Owen said. “If he had stayed in Kabul, I firmly believe he would be dead right now.”

Owen said it appears that Safi did not enter the U.S. correctly. He said the government in Baja is open to helping people like Safi, and his organization, Flanders Fields, has safehouses in that part of Mexico where he could have stayed and worked.

“We could have helped and gotten him asylum in Mexico, gotten him a job while he waited on an asylum claim to come to the United States in the proper way,” Owen said. But Safi thought entering the way he did was his best option, and he expected that he would be “accepted in the United States with a hero’s welcome,” Owen said.

“Never in a million years did Wasi think he would actually be arrested and kept, because everybody around the world sees what’s happening at our southern border,” Owen said. “And even after the arrest happened, we assumed, ‘Okay, that sucks. He’s a dumbass. He shouldn’t have done that. But they’re going to turn him loose after 48 to 72 hours, because, guess what, that’s what they do with all the migrants they detain at Eagle Pass.’”

Maldonado agreed the decision to charge Safi seems “arbitrary.” “For whatever reason, the Justice Department decided that this individual should be charged when others aren’t,” he said.

Owen said that Biden has the power to grant Safi parole “with a single stroke of a pen.” In addition to the veterans’ groups, U.S. representatives Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Michael Waltz of Florida have also sent a letter to Biden asking him to consider paroling Safi. Crenshaw and Waltz are both veterans.

The reason, Owen said, that Afghanistan evacuation groups have chosen Safi’s case as “our hill to die on” is because it appears to them that Safi is being treated differently from other migrants who did not serve alongside the United States.

“The fact that we’re not equally applying that law to everybody at Eagle Pass, or anywhere along our southern border, that we’re singling out Afghans to make examples out of, is really unconscionable,” Owen said. “This is a direct assault. It’s a betrayal.”