A man who spent years interpreting for American troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan is now sitting in ICE custody in St. Louis County, accused by federal immigration officials of terrorism-related conduct he insists never happened. He has lived in the United States legally since 2014, arriving through the Special Immigrant Visa program built specifically for Afghans who risked their lives helping U.S. forces.
The man, who has not been named in this report, was arrested by ICE on August 25 in St. Louis County and entered federal custody the following day, according to St. Louis Public Radio. ICE and the FBI detained him and placed him in deportation proceedings, with the agency contending he provided material support to a terrorist organization and willfully misrepresented a fact on his May 2019 naturalization application. He now holds a green card and works as a scientist, and he had been hoping to become a medical doctor.
His wife, 36-year-old Cata Estrada, said the government handed her husband more than 100 pages of allegations tied to a 2018 trip to Afghanistan. He told the outlet that agents chained him after taking him into custody, and he maintains his innocence, denying he was ever a member of or helped a terrorist organization. “His rights as a permanent resident are being violated,” he said, according to the same report.
A Decade of Interpreting Before the Allegations Surfaced
Between roughly 2012 and 2023, the man worked alongside American and Afghan forces battling the Taliban, and his own interpreter service spanned approximately October 2010 to April 2014, serving as a U.S. military interpreter in Gardez, Afghanistan. His family provided records documenting his work as a linguist, interpreter and cultural adviser during that stretch.
Robert Benjamin, who oversaw roughly 9,000 interpreters across southwest Asia and Africa, said the man worked as his personal cultural adviser, linguist and interpreter — though Benjamin has since recanted his support for him, per the station's reporting. The Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009 and Section 1059 of the National Defense Authorization Act require interpreters seeking Special Immigrant Visas to complete at least a year of faithful service and pass multi-agency background screening involving biographic and biometric checks by the State Department, Defense Department and FBI, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He cleared that vetting to enter the country legally in 2014.
The Terrorism Allegations at the Center of the Case
The government alleges the man had ties to a global terrorist organization and used Facebook to communicate with members of the group, and it has been building its case against him since 2021. Federal agents executed three search warrants on his Facebook pages in 2019, and the FBI issued a search warrant for an encrypted hard drive tied to him in 2021.
Customs and Border Patrol agents found a timer, cables, a power converter, a range finder, binoculars and six cellphones while he was traveling, according to the same reporting. The organization at issue, Jama'at ul Dawa al-Qu'ran, swore allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and had ties to al-Qaida and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. The State Department designated JDQ a foreign terrorist organization in 2016, noting it operated in Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan and was involved in the 2010 kidnapping and death of British aid worker Linda Norgrove, per the U.S. Department of State.
Under immigration law, providing material support — including safehouses, communication equipment, transport or funds — to a terrorist organization or its members renders a non-citizen inadmissible and deportable regardless of how minimal the assistance was, according to guidance from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Separately, willfully making false statements or concealing material facts on a naturalization application is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison and can serve as grounds for revoking permanent residence and ordering removal. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which criminalizes transactions involving sanctioned foreign entities or terrorist groups, carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine for willful violations.
A Watchlist Lawsuit and a 2016 Protest in the Background
The man is one of more than a dozen plaintiffs who filed a 2023 federal lawsuit challenging placement on the federal terrorist watchlist. That case, filed by civil rights groups on behalf of Muslim plaintiffs, argues that secret watchlisting violates Fifth Amendment due process rights and inflicts severe administrative harms without notice, according to background compiled by EBSCO. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, working with DHS and the State Department, maintains a consolidated database that had grown to more than 1 million names by 2023.
The dossier of allegations against him also references his attendance at a 2016 anti-Trump protest in downtown St. Louis. ICE has said the man will receive due process as his case moves forward.
A September Hearing With Long Odds
His immigration court hearing is scheduled for September 14 at the Kansas City Immigration Court, which handles all removal cases for Missouri and Kansas. That court recorded a 95.2 percent removal order rate for detained cases in fiscal year 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review — meaning the upcoming hearing represents a steep climb for anyone fighting removal from custody.
The case adds to a string of recent detentions of long-settled immigrants across the country. Nationally, data reported by TRAC Immigration in September showed that 70.6 percent of the 65,765 people held in ICE detention had no criminal convictions on their records, a trend Hoodline previously reported in connection with a sweep of more than 2,100 arrests across New York. Hoodline has also covered a similar case involving an Afghan national facing revocation of legal status, alongside recent reporting on ICE field operations rattling a Frederick neighborhood and the detention of a Collingswood restaurant owner ahead of his own immigration hearing.
St. Louis Public Radio's report was written by Brian Munoz, with Hiba Ahmad contributing.
