This was his first mistake.

Mike Williams, a retired lieutenant colonel who was one of Samey’s supervisors in Afghanistan, was grocery shopping in Wegmans when he got a call from the judge. Swearing an oath with his right hand, holding baby food in his left, he vouched for Samey’s character and performance. He told the judge that Samey’s life was in danger and that he would take responsibility for him. Samey’s aunt, an American citizen who manages a fried chicken business in New York, did the same.

“I thought it would be a fairly open-and-shut case,” Mr. Williams said. But when he heard the government’s lawyer on the phone shouting “objection” and “leading” the witness, he began to worry. “Samey didn’t know what he was doing.”

The judge ordered Samey’s deportation. Flabbergasted, Samey told his aunt he would rather die in Afghanistan than rot in jail awaiting appeal. His aunt begged him not to return home and hired a lawyer to appeal. Samey was shipped to a detention center in Alabama.

Court documents suggest Samey was right to be stunned by Judge Powell’s findings. “Common sense,” the judge wrote in his decision, suggested that real Taliban “would have assassinated him on the spot or taken him by force.” He also mused that the threatening note could have been left by car thieves.



An immigration lawyer I consulted who represents detainees at Etowah called the judge’s assertions about the Taliban “rank speculation” and said she was dumbfounded that he rejected the note Samey gave to the C.I.A.

“Nobody has evidence that good for asylum,” she said. “Under this judge’s standard no one with these types of cases could prove the nexus requirement of asylum.”

But the most extraordinary passage of Judge Powell’s decision is his rejection of Samey’s claim of persecution:

“Respondent must show that the Government was, or is, unable to control the Taliban. Although the Taliban is conducting a tenacious insurgency and terrorist campaign, country reports show that Afghan security forces are effective in controlling the Taliban in many parts of Afghanistan.”