An Afghan Ally Was Arrested by ICE. Less Than 24 Hours Later, He Was Dead.
· Reason
Within 24 hours of being taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), former Afghan Special Forces soldier Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal was dead. While ICE seeks to paint the father of six as a criminal, advocates working with Afghan refugees say his death was a preventable tragedy.
When officers arrived at Paktyawal's Richardson, Texas, home on March 13, they arrested the 41-year-old in front of his children. Paktyawal's wife told #AfghanEvac that she alerted arresting officers that her husband required an inhaler to breathe. She said officers did not take the inhaler and did not allow her to provide it later.
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Paktyawal called family later that day from an ICE facility, saying he was feeling unwell. He was sent to Dallas' Parkland Hospital at 11:45 p.m., and as of 8 a.m. the following morning, Paktyawal's family had been assured that he was still alive. Paktyawal was pronounced dead at 9:10 a.m., yet his family was not notified of the death until around noon.
#AfghanEvac reports that Paktyawal served alongside U.S. Army Special Forces for more than a decade in the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command. Because of the threat of reprisal, which has led to the deaths of numerous former Afghan Special Forces operators, Paktyawal and his family were evacuated during the withdrawal from Afghanistan and arrived in the U.S. on August 21, 2021, during Operation Allies Welcome.
Like many Afghans who arrived in August 2021, Paktyawal was given two years of parole. Acknowledging the lengthy and expensive process of receiving permanent status, the Biden administration offered a blanket two-year extension of parole for new arrivals in 2023. But many Afghans still had not obtained permanent status in August 2025, and the Trump administration did not renew parole when it expired. That has left numerous Afghan allies without work authorization or stability in the U.S., even though they can't safely return to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Because Afghan military personnel do not qualify for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV), Paktyawal applied for asylum to stay in the country. He had already undergone an asylum interview with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
#AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver tells Reason that while living in the U.S., Paktyawal had obtained a commercial driver's license (CDL) that allowed him to provide for his family. He lost his CDL around September 2025, when Texas ceased issuing CDLs to noncitizens to comply with federal directives. Afterward, Paktyawal found work in a halal market and bakery.
In its own statement about Paktyawal's death, ICE says he complained of shortness of breath and chest pain while in custody, at which point he was transferred to the hospital and "received breathing treatment." The agency also says that his tongue was noticeably swollen while he ate breakfast at the hospital, "prompting a medical response." Paktyawal's death is "currently under active investigation."
Before discussing his death in the statement, ICE described Paktyawal as a "criminal illegal alien" and alleged that he committed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fraud on September 16, 2025, just weeks after his parole expired. ICE claims Paktyawal committed a subsequent, unspecified "theft" on November 1.
"We have a man with a pending asylum case taken into ICE custody found dead less than 24 hours later with the cause of death still unresolved. I'm skeptical of any attempt to assassinate his character posthumously through accusation without proof or criminal conviction," Erick Resek, an attorney and director of an immigration law clinic, tells Reason. "We should keep the focus where it belongs, on the death of a father who worked alongside U.S. forces."
Resek noted that his own work on Afghan asylum cases showed him "firsthand how chaotic and unstable the legal terrain was for Afghan families, how parole, reparole, asylum, work authorization, public-benefits access, and shifting federal guidance were all in constant motion." He added that "things got really complicated and technical, and that's why it's wrong to treat an individualized and fast-changing benefits/status landscape as proof of fraud."
Government officials have also attempted to muddy the waters by claiming that Paktyawal had no record of military service.
VanDiver called foul on that claim, pointing to the case of Afghan ally Sayed Naser, whose service the government also said it had no record of after his viral arrest following an immigration court hearing. Naser was eventually released after his lawyer filed a successful habeas corpus petition, at which point a judge found Naser's due process rights had been violated.
VanDiver explained that Naser received approval for the first phase of the SIV process several months after the government claimed it had no record of his service—something that would have been impossible without proof that he had served alongside U.S. forces. "Bad interagency communications is not a problem for immigrants and refugees, it's [the government's] own problem, and they should fix that," VanDiver said.
Returning to Paktyawal's case, VanDiver added, "This story is about a 41-year-old man, father of six, taxpayer, who stood by us and then depended on us. And he's dead now and there's not a good reason for that. The fact that the government is trying to fight him and trying to denigrate his name tells me everything I need to know about the people in charge."
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