Boston-area Afghan immigrant: Trump 'closed the hope doors' on her refugee family

Tens of thousands of families around the world are in limbo after President Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program during his first week in office.

Among them are the loved ones of an Afghan couple that now lives in the Boston area.

Sabira is 26. She came to Boston in 2022, on a full scholarship to Northeastern University. She recently obtained a master's degree in journalism there. WBUR isn't using her last name, because her husband did intelligence work in Afghanistan's military and helped U.S. forces in the war there. They fear that history could make him a target of the Taliban.

Sabira's husband resettled in the U.S. after fleeing Afghanistan in the 2021 evacuation and living for a time in Uzbekistan.

Last year, Sabira was granted asylum in the U.S. She recently obtained her green card. She said she and her husband sponsored their parents and siblings to join them here in the U.S. as refugees, but that process is now on hold because of the president's order.

Sabira told WBUR's All Things Considered host Lisa Mullins her life here is incomplete.

On missing her family and not knowing when she'll see them:

"I came here in a good country with better opportunities, but I'm not happy as I should be, because I don't have family members [here]. And suddenly this new administration ... they just closed the hope doors for the refugees — that they had a window of hope that they will finally reunite with their family.

"I would say that was the saddest thing to share with [my] family members, because they are waiting in Pakistan just for this process that they will be enrolled as refugees to enter to United States legally. It's not safe to go back to Afghanistan."

On the risks her family faces if they return to Afghanistan:

"Of course, they have a fear of their life. They will be persecuted, because they already have faced these issues and the threats and the torture from Taliban in the past of these three years that they were in Afghanistan.

"My father was, his entire life, a government employee. And also, my mom was a free woman, and she had her own bakery and [was] working all the time. So she lost her job [after the Taliban took over], and also my brother was a tattoo artist and had his own small business of, like, the stuff that has been counted as a sin for the Taliban as a religious point. That's what the Taliban believes.

"And my brother has a lot of tattoos on his body as well. He has been arrested a couple of times, and he was tortured. Then the Taliban will [remove] skin off his body — the parts that he has tattooed. That was the saddest part. My brother stayed more than four nights with the Taliban in the prison.

"And Pakistan is not also safe, either, because [my and my husband's family members] are staying illegal without any visa or authorized legal documentation. So they are not allowed to work. They don't have access to the health care services. They can't go to school. Like how they can survive? They cannot go outside to walk freely. They are living hidden, because the police in Pakistan, they're arresting Afghans and they are deporting them."

On how she feels about living in the U.S. when her family is unable to do the same:

"I honestly feel guilty. I felt guilty being here, like, to have better opportunities, to have a better and safe life compared to my family members. I feel guilty that I can't help them.

"I have sisters. They are educated. They have attended very good schools. They have very good degrees from their schools. But now they are all housewives. When I graduated from Northeastern, I was not very happy to share those kind of moments with my family and my siblings, because I was just feeling guilty that, oh, I have this opportunity to be here and be safe, and have the most freedom that I wanted ever in my life. But my siblings, my parents, they don't have [that] now.

"But still, the only thing that I also wanted to share [is] that being in the U.S., especially in Boston, I got all the support that I needed. I saw a very kind and very welcome community. They helped refugees in every possible way they could, and that means a lot. I found out that home is not always a roof over your head. Home is somewhere that you feel safe. It's somewhere that you can speak freely, you can live freely, and have all those opportunities that you should have and basic rights that you should have."