WASHINGTON — An award-winning filmmaker whose work has explored conflict in his native Kashmir has been detained by U.S. immigration officials after legally coming to the United States to study and later claiming asylum, his family and friends said Wednesday.
The Department of Homeland Security separately confirmed on Wednesday that Arfat Sheikh was arrested on Sept. 24. The department said that Sheikh “legally entered the U.S. on a temporary basis and illegally overstayed his lawful admittance.”
A pending application does not confer legal status in the U.S., DHS said, adding that he will receive due process.
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Sheikh was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS, coming off a plane from California at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to a statement from relatives and friends campaigning for his release from detention.
Sheikh, who lived in Alexandria, Virginia, entered the U.S. in 2019 on a student visa to pursue graduate studies in film at Georgia State University and filed for asylum in 2020, according to the statement. It did not describe the grounds for his asylum claim. The statement said he had a pending immigration application and was authorized to work and live in the U.S.
President Donald Trump’s administration said in August that it was working “to identify and revoke the non-immigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the U.S. claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently.”
Trump has pursued an immigration crackdown and deportation drive that he says aims to improve domestic security. Rights advocates say the crackdown has violated due process and free speech rights and has created an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities, who have raised concerns about racial profiling.
Sheikh’s first feature film, 2024’s “Saffron Kingdom,” won Best Feature Film at the Chicago Filmmakers Awards, the LA Film and Documentary Awards, the Melbourne Independent Film Festival and the Wake Forest Film Festival. Sheikh, who hails from India-administered Kashmir, won the Emerging Filmmaker Activist Award at the Teaneck International Film Festival.
The film explored conflict in Kashmir through the journey of a family from Srinagar in India-administered Kashmir in the 1990s to Atlanta in 2019.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is claimed in full by both Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, which each control only part of it and have fought wars over it. India revoked Kashmir’s constitutional autonomy in August 2019.
