Afghan man who served alongside U.S. forces dies after less than a day in ICE custody, family and advocates say

Mohammad Nazeer Paktyawal died on Saturday, less than a day after he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside of his Dallas-area apartment. (Courtesy AfghanEvac via CNN Newsource)

An Afghan man who served alongside U.S. special forces and fled his native country after its takeover by the Taliban died over the weekend shortly after being detained by immigration authorities, according to his family and an advocacy group.

Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal died on Saturday, less than a day after he was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside of his Dallas-area apartment. His family said the 41-year-old father of six had no known health conditions and had been seeking asylum since his arrival to the U.S. in August 2021. The Department of Homeland Security said his humanitarian parole expired last August.

DHS said in a statement that Paktyawal, who was arrested during a “targeted enforcement operation” and did not report any prior medical history, complained of shortness of breath and chest pains during his medical intake exam at a Dallas ICE field office after his Friday arrest.

ICE contacted paramedics, who transported Paktyawal to a Dallas hospital, DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said. On Saturday, Paktyawal’s tongue was swollen and he received an IV drip. His condition deteriorated Saturday morning and he died shortly after 9 a.m. local time after receiving CPR and other resuscitative efforts from physicians, Bis added.

An initial report from the Dallas County Medical Examiner listed no cause or manner of death. Paktyawal’s death marks the 12th of a detainee in ICE custody this year.

It has prompted widespread grief in the close-knit Afghan diaspora community in Texas, where many of the more than 190,000 Afghans who fled to the U.S. after the country’s government collapsed in August 2021 settled, said Rahmanullah Zazy, a leader in the Dallas-area Afghan community who knew Paktyawal and his family.

“They’re saying they took our community member alive to the detention center, and now we are getting the dead body,” Zazy said. “We want peace.”

The Biden administration evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans after the country’s government was taken over by the Taliban as the U.S. withdrew, ending two decades of war.

The effort was meant to protect Afghans whose work alongside U.S. servicemembers made them vulnerable to reprisals from the new Taliban government.

Both Zazy and a group that has advocated for Afghan refugees said Paktyawal served alongside U.S. special forces starting around 2005.

DHS said in its statement that, upon entering the U.S., Paktyawal “provided no record of his military service.” But the advocacy group, AfghanEvac, provided a certificate of service indicating Paktyawal served alongside a special forces group in eastern Afghanistan, along the Pakistan border.

“We don’t know how he died,” said the group’s president, Shawn VanDiver. “We just know he’s dead.”

CNN has reached out to Fort Bragg, the military base where the special forces group was based, to confirm Paktyawal’s service alongside the US service members.

After U.S. President Donald Trump took office last year, he enacted broad changes to U.S. refugee policy which cut off thousands of vulnerable Afghans who worked directly for or on behalf of the US government from critical assistance.

The program came under greater scrutiny in November, after an Afghan man who came to the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome and was granted asylum last year allegedly shot two National Guard members in Washington, DC, killing one. The shooting suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, worked with the CIA in Afghanistan for over a decade before entering the U.S. in 2021. The Justice Department has said it is seeking the death penalty against him.

The shooting prompted Trump to call for a re-examination of every person who migrated from Afghanistan during the Biden administration.

In her statement on Paktyawal’s death, Bis, the DHS spokesperson, criticized the Biden-era program, which she said let “thousands of unvetted Afghan nationals” into the United States.

But that claim is misleading. All Afghans who entered the United States were subject to screenings by intelligence, law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals, and officials and experts have said evacuated Afghans were sometimes vetted more than once – both while they were in Afghanistan and in transit countries where they were staying before entering the U.S.

VanDiver said Paktyawal had six children aged 18-months to 15-years-old, the youngest of whom is an American citizen.

In a brief interview, Paktyawal’s brother, Naseer, described his brother as a “hero.”

“He was here,” he said, “and he just got killed in less than 24 hours.”

By Michael Williams and Masoud Popalzai