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

Mohammad is one of thousands of Afghans in immigration limbo in the U.S. after they risked their lives to help the American military during the war.

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.