He was tortured by the Taliban. Will he be sent back to Afghanistan?

Mohammad stepped toward the riverbank and felt his stomach drop. He was somewhere in western Guatemala, traveling with a group of migrants hoping to reach the U.S. He was hungry, dehydrated and sick, with painful sores all over his body from some kind of infection. 

He now faced a more pressing problem: He couldn’t swim. 

He was three weeks into a brutal journey that had spanned nine countries and 4,000 miles. He was robbed four times in Brazil and Colombia, extorted by police officers in Guatemala and nearly drowned while crossing a different river, this one in Panama. 

But for him, there was no turning back.

Mohammad was not from a Central American country. He was an Afghan who had worked with a U.S. military contractor during the war. After the chaotic American troop withdrawal in 2021, Taliban fighters dragged him out of his home and threw him in prison, where he was tortured over three days.

He was convinced that returning to Afghanistan meant certain death. But how was he going to make it across another river? A smuggler leading his group made clear there was no choice.

“If you don’t cross, I’ll throw you in,” the smuggler barked in Spanish. 

Mohammad eased his body into the rushing water with the help of an inner tube. He managed to cross the river. And months later, he made it into the U.S legally.

But this is not a feel-good story, not yet and maybe not ever.

After entering the country in February 2024, Mohammad learned that his application for a special immigrant visa — made available to Afghans who aided the U.S. military in Afghanistan after 9/11 — had been denied by the Biden administration.

He has applied for asylum, but that process can take years. And the Trump administration has already moved to revoke the legal status of migrants like Mohammad who were allowed into the country on a temporary basis for “urgent humanitarian reasons.” 

That means he could be swept up by federal immigration agents before — or even at — his first court hearing, scheduled for early May. 

Those in Mohammad's corner include the refugee advocates who helped him make it to the U.S., the Midwestern couple who welcomed him into their home and his former boss in Afghanistan, a no-nonsense Alabama native who is incensed over the way the U.S. government has treated the Afghans who worked for him. 

But these people know there is little they can do for Mohammad now as he faces the possibility of being detained or deported. “If he goes back to Afghanistan, they’re gonna kill him,” said his old boss, Chris Fulford, who was based in Kabul for 10 years before the Taliban took over. “There ain’t no ifs, ands or buts.”

Mohammad told his story to NBC News on the condition that he be identified only by his first name because he fears the Taliban will target his family back home. 

NBC News corroborated his account through interviews with Fulford and refugee advocates who have been in touch with him for years, as well as asylum application documents, records from the U.S. embassy in Kabul and text message exchanges shared by the refugee advocates who were in contact with him throughout his journey to America. 

What Mohammad endured to reach the U.S. was extraordinary, but not unique.

Thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military remain in immigration limbo after fleeing their homeland to avoid being hunted down by the Taliban.

“It’s shameful,” said Jill Marie Bussey, director of legal affairs at Global Refuge, a nonprofit that assists refugees. 

She said that both the Biden and Trump administrations have failed to come to the aid of Afghans who had served America’s cause during the war.

In normal times a pending asylum application acts as a significant protection against removal orders. But Afghans like Mohammad, who assisted the U.S. military and followed the law in entering the U.S., now find themselves in an extremely confusing and uncertain position. 

“He’s subject to the whims of an intentionally cruel administration,” Bussey said, “and I don’t think they care whether he was an ally or not.” 

When asked about Mohammad and other Afghans in the U.S., a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that Afghanistan’s "improved security situation and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent Afghan nationals from returning to their home country."

Mohammad’s fascination with the U.S. began early. 

He was born just a few months after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. American military convoys regularly passed by his house in the country’s northern region. 

One day, when he was a small boy, U.S. soldiers riding atop a tank tossed chocolates down to him. He gathered them up and sprinted home to show his father, who was a member of the Afghan Air Force and worked alongside the U.S. Air Force.

“Who are they?” Mohammad remembers asking his father.

“They are Americans,” his father responded. “They are here to help us and our country.”When he got a little older, he focused on learning English. He dreamed of becoming an interpreter for the American military. 

In 2016, he was scouring the internet when he came across a Facebook group of Americans devoted to helping Afghans who worked with the U.S. military. He reached out to one of the organizers, Kim Staffieri, setting in motion a relationship that would remain close to this day.

“Truly all he talked about was wanting to be an interpreter,” said Staffieri, who would later co-found a nonprofit dedicated to helping people like Mohammad, the Association of Wartime Allies. 

Mohammad was only 14, but his persistence and determination awed Staffieri.

“Folks would make fun of him” in Afghanistan “because he talked so much about the Americans and how much he wanted to work for them,” she said.

“He just didn’t care," Staffieri said. "It’s what he wanted. It was his dream."

In the fall of 2019, he began working for an aviation maintenance firm that contracted with the U.S. Air Force.

His job was unglamorous but essential, helping to keep an inventory on parts and ensure that they had on hand what was needed to fix aircraft like C-130 Hercules transport planes and Black Hawk helicopters

He proved himself to be one of the company’s most important Afghan employees, according to his boss, Fulford. 

“I probably had over 150 Afghans work for me over the 10 years that I was there,” Fulford said. “He was one of the few that I had last right there to the end.”The end came quickly — and brutally.

President Joe Biden entered office in January 2021, inheriting from the Trump administration an agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban that required American troops to withdraw from Afghanistan in less than a year. Biden opted to go ahead with the pullout, and in August 2021, the Afghan government army collapsed in a rout and the Taliban seized Kabul.

Amid the chaos, Fulford called Mohammad with an urgent plea: Destroy what you can and leave the airport immediately. 

“I was thinking that day that all my life had ended, and I had no hope for the future,” Mohammad said. 

He said he went into hiding and twice slipped into Pakistan to avoid the Taliban. But he was home on Feb. 7, 2023, when Taliban forces surrounded his family’s property. 

They entered the house, beat him with rifle butts, blindfolded him with a black cloth and loaded him into the back of a truck, according to Mohammad. He was taken to a prison, where Mohammad said Taliban guards tied his hands to a pillar and whipped his back, shocked him with electric cables and repeatedly held his head under water until he almost passed out. 

After three days, his family managed to secure his release with a large bribe and the intervention of elders in his hometown. Mohammad said he left the prison in dire condition. He could not walk and had to be carried out.

He and his family knew he had to leave Afghanistan, but he had no good options.Mohammad had applied for a special immigrant visa, a program set up by Congress to permit Afghans and Iraqis who worked for the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S. But his first application was rejected due to a clerical error, according to Mohammad and Staffieri.

He filed a second visa application, but it got stuck in an indefinite bureaucratic process. He had no legal way to stay in Pakistan. Guaranteed persecution and possible death awaited him in Afghanistan. So, in the summer of 2023, Mohammad concluded he had only one play: make it to the U.S. and seek asylum.

That September, Mohammad found himself in a rundown hotel in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was lonely and on edge. He couldn’t speak the language, couldn’t find work. He'd been robbed twice.

“The robbers knew we were migrants and that we did not know the language,” Mohammad said, “which is why they were able to easily do whatever they wanted.”

Brazil had granted him a travel visa and supporters overseas helped pay for his flight from Pakistan. But it quickly became clear that his situation there was untenable.

So he joined up with a random band of migrants and headed for the Peruvian border.

“I did not have a plan for any of this,” Mohammad said. “We took a car to the border, and I had no idea what was going to happen.”

Getting through Peru and Ecuador was relatively smooth. Colombia was not. Facing harassment from traffickers and corrupt police, Mohammad said, he stuffed his cash and passport in a sock and hid it inside a toilet roll. 

The group of migrants tried to get to Panama by boat but was twice intercepted by the Panamanian Coast Guard. With a boat trip no longer possible, they now had no choice but to travel via the Darien Gap — the notorious jungle corridor connecting Colombia and Panama. Hundreds have died on the 60-mile route due to the treacherous terrain, extreme heat, fast-moving rivers and presence of criminal gangs, according to human rights groups.

In just the first two days in the Darien Gap, Mohammad said, he passed five corpses. But the most harrowing moment came a few days later when they reached a river in Panama. 

His group decided to lock arms in a human chain and trudge across the river as a unit. No one wanted to be first, so Mohammad volunteered despite not knowing how to swim.

Something went wrong — the chain broke. Mohammad flailed about in the river before slipping under the water.

He began to choke on muddy water and thought it was all over. Then he felt something grab him from above. It was two Haitian men who had rushed to his aid. They pulled him out of the water and led him to the other side.

"I was coughing," Mohammad said, "but I realized that I was alive."

Not long after, however, he started to feel seriously ill. He had a bad fever and noticed painful red bumps on his stomach, which then spread over his whole body. 

But the group kept going — through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.Finally they made it to Mexico City. By then his illness had gotten worse, so Staffieri tapped her network. 

A nurse she knew in Virginia managed to arrange for a doctor in Mexico City to visit Mohammad. It turned out to be MRSA, a dangerous infection. The doctor prescribed multiple antibiotics, and Mohammad gradually began to feel better.

“Without that being treated, he probably would have gotten sepsis and died,” Staffieri said. 

Because he was in Mexico, Mohammad was able to apply for an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection through the CBP One App, which allowed migrants seeking asylum to schedule appointments to cross the border at legal ports of entry rather than entering the country illegally. 

Then it became a waiting game. By then, he had a small but formidable network of supporters in the U.S. That included a couple from middle America — an insurance executive and a middle school nurse — who agreed to house him and provide financial support.

The couple, who have a son around the same age as Mohammad, asked not to be identified over concerns it could increase the chances of his being targeted by immigration agents.

The mother had been in regular contact with Mohammad since he left Brazil two months earlier. Now that he was in a major city, she had a chance to meet him in person.

When she arrived in Mexico City, Mohammad greeted her with a bouquet of flowers.

“Super, super sweet,” she said. 

They spent three days together, walking around the city and getting to know each other. She was immediately struck by his spirit and outlook. 

“He had been through some horrible, horrible conditions, and still had this brightness and lightness and hope to him,” she said. “It’s really easy to be his cheerleader.”He waited for more than three months for word on his asylum appointment. In early 2024, he was notified that an appointment date had finally been set.

His sponsor family paid for his flight to the Mexican border and his appointment with Border Patrol went smoothly. On Feb. 5, he received documents granting him the right to work and stay in the U.S. for two years as the case played out. 

“I am over the bridge and 5 meters to get to US,” he messaged Staffieri, marking the end of an extraordinary journey. 

“I think you’ve done it,” she replied.

A year into his new life in America, Mohammad is thriving.

He’s enrolled at a community college, taking courses in law and political science. He’s hit it off with his American “brother” and hangs out with friends he's made in college. But he also tries not to miss many meals at home because he loves his sponsor father’s cooking. 

In March, he turned 23. His sponsor family offered to take him to the restaurant of his choice, but that wasn't what he really wanted.

“I just want you to cook,” he said to the father. 

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. He misses his family and sometimes finds it difficult to concentrate on his studies given the Trump administration’s moves against immigrants.In early April, he received an electronic message from the Department of Homeland Security ordering him to leave the U.S. within seven days. The notice was sent to people who entered the country, as Mohammad did, using the CBP One app — as well as to some people who were born here and are citizens.

“What will happen next?” Mohammad said. “Will they send us back to the Taliban? We don’t know.”

He found out in late February that his special immigrant visa application had been denied again. The denial letter said that even though he was employed for at least a year, as required, the employment period does not "overlap for at least one year with the performance dates of the U.S. government contract/subcontractor under which you worked."

Those assisting Mohammad believe the State Department got it wrong. He’s in the process of submitting a new application for a special immigrant visa, but time is not on his side.

Asked about Mohammad’s application, a State Department spokesperson said it “does not comment on specific cases.” The department continues to process applications for special immigrant visas, and the deadline for any outstanding claims is Dec. 31, the spokesperson added.

Fulford, Mohammad's former boss, said he’s appalled by the way two different U.S. administrations have turned their backs on Afghans like Mohammad who risked their lives to help the American military. 

“Those people were in more danger than us Americans who were there,” Fulford said. 

He added: “We can send folks to Mars and s--- like that, but we can’t get some immigration paperwork done to keep people in the country. That’s the darnedest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Mohammad, for his part, is focused on getting his degree. He wants to become a lawyer and join a nonprofit that helps people in the situation that he finds himself in now. 

“I have many plans for the future,” he said. “God willing, I will try to make that happen.”