A federal judge ordered the release of an Afghan national whom the U.S. government once designated a "known suspected terrorist" and flagged for "high-profile removal" after Department of Justice attorneys failed to provide the current status of a national security investigation against him.
Ahmadzai Abdul Ghafoor, who has been held in immigration custody since May 2025 and represented himself in his judicial proceeding, had claimed in court filings that he served on the security detail of the former president of Afghanistan.
Ghafoor stated that he fled the country in 2021, fearing that the Taliban would retaliate against him for serving in the U.S.-backed government. According to his own account, he tried to meet with Customs and Border Protection officials multiple times before entering the U.S. illegally and surrendering himself to agents on May 30th, 2025.
On July 9th, 2025, an immigration judge entered a final order of removal that would have allowed ICE agents to deport Ghafoor from the U.S. Ghafoor, however, was kept detained in a facility in El Paso, Texas, past the statutory deadlines for deportation.
Ghafoor filed his petition for habeas corpus on April 16th, citing his seemingly indefinite detention and that he was unlikely to be able to be deported back to Afghanistan, which does not have a repatriation agreement with the U.S. The government also stated in a filing that an alternative country for Ghafoor’s removal has not “been designated at this time,” however, the government is exploring “potential alternative removal efforts.” In March, a federal appeals court allowed the government to continue its practice of deporting immigrants to third-party countries.
Following a hearing over Ghafoor’s petition, Senior U.S. District Judge David Briones of the Western District of Texas ordered the Justice Department on April 28th to explain why Ghafoor had been designated as a ‘known suspected terrorist,’ whether he was still under investigation, and, if so, what the status of the investigation was. Judge Briones initially ordered the government to respond to his questions by May 1st. He extended the deadline until May 11th after the Justice Department requested additional time.
According to court records, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force reached out to ICE agents in El Paso on August 1st, 2025, to request an interview with Ghafoor about an undisclosed matter. The interview was scheduled for the week of August 18th, but it was canceled just before it was about to take place.
Judge Briones’ order states that the Justice Department replied on May 11th that the government was “not available to disclose” whether Ghafoor was still designated as a suspected terrorist and was “not privy to the status of the investigation.” The department also told Judge Briones that the Joint Terrorism Task Force has “not been advised as to any action that will be taken against” Ghafoor. ICE and the FBI did not respond to a Wednesday evening request for comment.
The Justice Department’s unusual non-answer came amidst a recent trend of miscommunications between the executive branch and the federal judiciary. Last week, judges in the District of Rhode Island appointed a special counsel to investigate whether an assistant U.S. attorney committed misconduct by failing to inform a judge, who was deciding whether to release an individual in a habeas immigration warrant, that the individual had an arrest warrant for homicide in the Dominican Republic.
The majority of the court filings in the Ghafoor docket are not available on PACER, the online repository of federal court records, due to the nature of the suit code. Habeas cases such as Ghafoor’s are considered by the U.S. Courts to have inherent privacy concerns, and thus can only be reviewed in person at the courthouse in El Paso, Texas.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas declined to provide electronic copies of the Justice Department filings. A Department of Justice spokesman also declined to comment on a previous Court Watch inquiry about the ongoing litigation. The U.S. Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment this afternoon on the release order or whether the Justice Department would appeal the decision. Efforts to reach Ghafoor were unsuccessful, in part due to the fact that he does not have a lawyer and was detained at an ICE facility throughout his legal proceedings.
Court Watch was unable to retrieve physical copies of the court documents at the federal courthouse in El Paso. Multiple requests over the course of two weeks to Judge Briones’ chambers to relax the electronic restrictions on court filings in this case went unanswered. Federal judges in other districts have routinely ordered habeas documents available on PACER if the case was of significant public interest.
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