Ehsaan and Sania are thankful for the life they’ve begun together in Fremont, surrounded by Afghans with stories similar to their own among the many families and businesses in an area known as Little Kabul.
Ehsaan, 27, was born and raised in this city, while Sania, 23, immigrated last year from Kandahar, Afghanistan. They recently married after waiting three years for Sania to obtain a visa to enter the United States.
Their joy is tempered by recent moves by the Trump administration to ban Afghan nationals and those from a dozen other countries from entering the U.S. On Tuesday, the administration announced it would add five more countries to the travel ban list.
Also deeply concerning was a recent shooting on the eve of Thanksgiving of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., and the charges against an Afghan national, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who reportedly spent time working with the CIA and other federal agents in Afghanistan on counterterrorism operations.
But Ehsaan and Sania said it is unfair for the U.S. government to restrict those from Afghanistan who had nothing to do with the shootings from starting a new life as they are doing. Fearful of the backlash, they both requested to be identified only as their first names.
In Fremont, home to one of the largest concentrations of Afghans in the United States, they are in the company of Afghans who started immigrating in large numbers beginning in the 1980s.
After American troops withdrew from the United States’ 20-year war with Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban assumed control of the country, and even more Afghans continued flowing in to the Bay Area, many of whom had cooperated with U.S. troops against the Taliban and feared persecution and death.The region is home to an estimated 60,000 Afghan immigrants, many of whom are refugees, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Ehsaan feels the Trump administration is distorting Afghan immigrants’ intentions in coming to this country.
At a rally earlier this month in Pennsylvania, Trump said, “I’ve also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.” After the president was heavily criticized for referring to those nations as “shithole countries,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson subsequently issued a statement saying, “President Trump is right. Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here.”
In reality, Ehsaan said, those who come to the U.S. from Afghanistan want the same thing as anyone else living in this country. For Afghans affected by the ban, who “can’t see their family now, it must feel bad.”
“The people that legally come here want to work. They want to marry, they want to (have families),” he said.
Ehsaan now works in the automobile industry and Sania is studying to get her GED so she can go to a university and continue her studies. She is focused on becoming a nurse and phlebotomist. It was in 2022, just before she arrived to the U.S. in 2024, that the Taliban closed the doors to her school and turned it into a parking lot, she said.
“We were so sad. We cannot do anything, we were just sitting,” she said. “I was ready to finish my school, and then they stopped us.”
Around that same time, Ehsaan’s mother visited Afghanistan and met Sania and her family. She proposed that Sania marry her son, and Sania agreed. They applied for a U.S. visa, and Sania, upon receiving one, arrived at San Francisco International Airport and met her soon-to-be husband for the first time. They were married in May of 2024.
Shortly after she arrived, Ehsaan took Sania to see the ocean in Half Moon Bay – the second time she’d ever seen the sea. The first was during a family visit to Karachi, Pakistan, when she was 4 years old.
Now, she loves the ocean and swimming in the cold Pacific water, and enjoying cloudy, gray, rainy days which are so different from the hot, sunny days she grew up with in Kandahar. It rains much less frequently there than in the Bay Area, Sania said, recalling the special smell of a spring season’s first rain in her home country.
While the White House may be trying to cast suspicion upon Afghan immigrants, the young couple said they feel at home in Fremont. They do not feel bad for themselves, Ehsaan said, but he does feel this country tries to “demonize” Islam and predominantly Muslim countries.
They also spend time at their local mosque in Union City, Masjid Al-Huda, which they said serves a large population of Afghans in the region. They buy Afghan bread from Maiwand Market in Fremont, and they often spend time at Suju’s coffee shop.
They want to travel to Afghanistan, but with the administration’s immigration crackdowns and travel bans, Ehsaan and Sania have agreed not to purchase airfare until Sania obtains her citizenship. They want to avoid any run-ins with federal agents, and fear being separated, or running into trouble with customs if they leave the country for vacation in Afghanistan, where her family still lives.
Even as Trump called off a recent surge of federal agents he threatened to send to the Bay Area, ICE has still been conducting several detainments and deportations throughout parts of the Bay Area, including at the region’s federal immigration courts and ICE facilities.
ICE confirmed to this organization that immigration authorities in November detained and arrested two men, Jhonatan Silva Sandoval, 38, of Colombia, and Samuel Alexander Meza Ceneno, 33, of Nicaragua, during two separate operations. The two men did not appear to have any prior criminal history in Alameda County court records.
Earlier this year, federal agents arrested and deported a Livermore father, Miguel Lopez, who continues to await the outcome of a Northern California District Court case that could grant him a pathway back to his family in the Tri-Valley.
Hayward’s Mayor, Mark Salinas, commented on the uptick in the East Bay’s federal agent activity in an interview with this news organization, saying the detainments and deportations stoke fear in his city’s immigrant communities. Federal agents are largely not notifying local authorities of their presence, which confuses the community because ICE and Border Patrol agents often get confused with other federal agents, such as those from Homeland Security and other departments.
“When they do come it is my hope, and my expectation, that they call the Hayward police department to notify us to let us know that they are in town. What we’re observing is that they may not be doing that every time they come to town,” Salinas said. ”It just causes for confusion, it increases fear, and neighbors feel that they Hayward Police Department is involved (when) we’re not.”
Even if they wanted to go to Afghanistan, they can’t until the feds lift the current travel ban, which does not have an expiration date. For now, they said they will wait and continue to build their lives together.
With a new love for the region’s diverse nature and environment, Sania said she wants to retire with Ehsaan some years down the road somewhere near an ocean or in a home in the mountains.
“Afghanistan is not a backward country … Islam is not a bad thing and neither is Afghanistan,” Ehsaan said. “Afghan people are really nice.”