Francine Prose for the Guardian: “Ali Faqirzada is an Afghan refugee. He deserves to stay in America”
Ali Faqirzada ’28 at Bard College. Photo by Aaron Schock
Francine Prose, distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, has published an article in the Guardian in defense of Bard Baccalaureate student and Afghan asylum seeker Ali Faqirzada ’28, who was detained by ICE on October 14 just after he had been found to have a viable claim for asylum. The Faqirzada family, who had assisted the American government and NATO with projects to improve the lives of Afghan women, fled the Taliban after the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. “In a more reasonable, more compassionate country, the immigration official would have walked around the table, shaken Faqirzada’s hand, and thanked him for how much he has done on behalf of his people and our own,” Prose writes. “But that is not what happened.”
Efforts by Bard College to free Faqirzada—led by president Leon Botstein, himself a refugee from the Nazis—along with federal and state elected officials and the Episcopal Diocese of New York, have been complicated by a November 29 government ruling that has paused the final approval of asylum applications. The ruling, which comes in the aftermath of a Washington DC shooting of two national guard soldiers by an Afghan national who had worked with the CIA, includes a pause on the issuing of green cards to Afghans already residing in the US. “A genial, kind-hearted, highly motivated computer science student and hospital security guard should not be held accountable for someone else’s crime,” Prose writes. “Nor should the entire Afghan community.”
Post Date: 12-04-2025
Efforts by Bard College to free Faqirzada—led by president Leon Botstein, himself a refugee from the Nazis—along with federal and state elected officials and the Episcopal Diocese of New York, have been complicated by a November 29 government ruling that has paused the final approval of asylum applications. The ruling, which comes in the aftermath of a Washington DC shooting of two national guard soldiers by an Afghan national who had worked with the CIA, includes a pause on the issuing of green cards to Afghans already residing in the US. “A genial, kind-hearted, highly motivated computer science student and hospital security guard should not be held accountable for someone else’s crime,” Prose writes. “Nor should the entire Afghan community.”
Post Date: 12-04-2025