This story was originally published by The Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.
Afghan man who helped the U.S. fight the Taliban ordered released from ICE detention in Missouriby Mary Sanchez, Beacon: Missouri
December 2, 2025
An Afghan man who fled the Taliban has been released from a Missouri immigration detention facility following a federal judge’s ruling.
Mohammad Ali Dadfar had been held in the Greene County Jail in Springfield since early October, when he was detained and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
TakeawaysA U.S. District Court judge agreed the asylum-seeker was unlawfully detained without a warrant and his parole was terminated without a hearing.Mohammad Ali Dadfar’s asylum claim is based on working with the U.S. military during the 20-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.Immigration proceedings are administrative, the court pointed out, but due process must still be followed.
On Monday, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Southern Division, agreed that Dadfar, an asylum-seeker, was arrested without a warrant and that his permission to be in the U.S. was unlawfully terminated without a hearing or written notice.
The court noted that while immigration detentions are administrative, they are still subject to due process reviews.
Officials for ICE had argued that the Missouri court did not have jurisdiction.
The court disagreed, noting that the case challenged Dadfar’s unlawful detention, but not other proceedings the government might use to remove him from the country.
“Respondents also did not provide a hearing before a neutral decisionmaker where ICE was required to justify the basis for re-detention or explain why Petitioner is a flight risk or danger to the community,” the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Douglas Harpool said.
Harpool also forbade the Department of Homeland Security from moving Dadfar out of the Missouri court’s jurisdiction before they complied with the order to release him.
Dadfar was released on Monday and will be driven by a friend to reunite with his wife and young children in another state, said Rekha Sharma-Crawford, a Kansas City immigration attorney who filed the case challenging his arrest and detention.
Dadfar had been granted parole into the U.S. in 2024. His parole is effective until June 17, 2026.
The decision to grant him parole “creates a liberty interest intimately tied to freedom from imprisonment,” the ruling said.
“Freedom from imprisonment — from government custody, detention, or other forms of physical restraint — lies at the heart of the liberty that the (due process) Clause protects,” the ruling noted, citing previous court decisions.
Dadfar requested asylum after arriving at the U.S. southern border. He had traveled through the dangerous Darien Gap jungle with his family.
The asylum claim is based on his assertion that he was among the thousands of Afghans who aided the U.S. military, battling to keep the Taliban from overtaking his native Afghanistan.
Dadfar, an over-the-road trucker, was taken into custody by Indiana State Police on Oct. 10. Police detained him during a routine stop at a weigh station. He was then handed over to ICE in Chicago before being placed in detention in Greene County, Missouri.
Dadfar is a 37-year-old father of four children, all under the age of 12.
Reached at the family’s home, Dadfar’s wife said she was elated. She’d been worried earlier in the day while awaiting word from the court.
The family lives outside of Missouri.
The case argued that the government’s actions violated a prior consent decree, ICE’s own regulations and Dadfar’s due process.
Dadfar’s case is among a spate of federal lawsuits contesting warrantless arrests by ICE and is part of continued legal attempts to hold the Trump administration accountable to the 2022 Castañon Nava federal consent decree.
Dadfar, the Missouri ruling said, had timely filed his asylum application with a Colorado immigration court. He also had a valid work permit.
The next hearing in the asylum application is February 2026.
Dadfar is represented by a Colorado immigration law firm in the asylum request.
Sharma-Crawford said Dadfar’s arrest and detention are another example of the Trump administration violating policy. She also said the case shows how even immigrants who follow the rules are threatened with removal.
“Even doing what they are supposed to do, in the way the law requires, does not keep them safe,” Sharma-Crawford said in a social media post. “That is what is happening right now in America.”
This article first appeared on Beacon: Missouri and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.