The first time Naseer Paktiawal was eligible to vote in the United States, he voted for President Donald Trump. In a tearful video that has circulated widely, he says he will regret that choice for the rest of his life, because his older brother, whom he called his best friend, died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“My first vote was for this president, and I regret it, and I’m gonna regret it for the rest of my life,” Paktiawal said in the video, which was originally posted by ABC News and recirculated by the Mirror US.
“Because of me, because of my voting, he got arrested, and he lost his life. And I’m never going to forgive myself for that.” He added, in remarks reported by the Mirror US, “I don’t believe this administration.”
Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, 41, was a father of six living with his family in Richardson, a Dallas suburb, while his asylum case remained pending. According to his family and the veterans’ advocacy group AfghanEvac, he was a former Afghan special forces soldier who worked alongside U.S. troops and was evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021 as American forces withdrew. ICE has said it has no record of any military service.
ICE detained him on the morning of March 13, 2026, as he prepared to take his children to school. His 12-year-old son, Imrain, witnessed the arrest and described it in the same video. “I was standing there, and then they came and just took him,” the boy said, according to the Mirror US. “I was like, just don’t take him, please.”
Naseer Paktiawal described plainclothes agents emerging from unmarked vehicles and handcuffing his brother — an account consistent with reporting by CBS News and the Texas Tribune, which said several men in plain clothes and tactical gear jumped from two unmarked SUVs.
Less than 24 hours later, Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal was dead at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.
Naseer said he learned of it in a phone call from an official who told him his brother had died and that his body was at the hospital, according to the Mirror US.
At the time of his death, his family said he had no known health conditions. “He was healthy,” his son told CBS News, adding, “I want to know why he died.”
The Department of Homeland Security said Paktiawal was arrested during a “targeted enforcement operation” and that his humanitarian parole had expired in August 2025.
DHS said he reported no prior medical history at intake, but later complained of shortness of breath and chest pains at ICE’s Dallas field office and was taken to Parkland, where his condition deteriorated.
According to DHS’s account, reported by the Mirror US, his tongue became swollen, he was given an epinephrine drip, and he was pronounced dead the next morning after efforts to resuscitate him failed.
Months later, an official cause emerged — and it did not settle the family’s questions.
In July, the Dallas County medical examiner’s death certificate ruled the death an accident, attributing it to an adverse drug reaction that triggered anaphylaxis and worsened his asthma, with methamphetamine, cigarette smoking, and heart disease listed as contributing factors, according to The Texas Tribune and The Dallas Morning News.
The family has rejected that conclusion. “What accident are they talking about?” Naseer Paktiawal asked at a news conference, as reported by The Dallas Morning News. “Someone in that building knows what happened to my brother.”
The full record remains sealed. The Dallas Morning News reported that Dallas County has sought to withhold Paktiawal’s autopsy, telling the Texas attorney general that its release could interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation into his death, one the county has not publicly connected to any named target.
Paktiawal’s death drew attention from members of Congress and Afghan advocacy groups, in part because of his reported service to the United States. Shawn VanDiver, the U.S. Navy veteran who leads AfghanEvac, questioned the circumstances in comments to the Texas Tribune, saying it “would be pretty weird for a healthy 41-year-old man to die less than 24 hours after being taken into government custody.”
At the time, Paktiawal was counted as the 12th person to die in ICE custody in 2026; the toll has continued to climb since.
A CBS News analysis found that 31 people died in ICE detention the previous year, the highest number in two decades, as detention numbers surged under the Trump administration’s deportation push.
For the Dallas-area Afghan community, the loss remains raw. “They’re saying they took our community member alive to the detention center, and now we are getting the dead body,” Rahmanullah Zazy, a community leader who knew the family, said in comments reported by the Mirror US. “We want peace.”
For Naseer Paktiawal, the grief is tied to guilt over a single vote. He has said his brother was the reason he wanted to build a life in the United States and even work for its government. Now, he says, he cannot separate his choice at the ballot box from the death of the man he called his best friend, and he does not expect he ever will.
https://ctninfo.com/he-says-he-regre…d-in-ice-custody/
Source: The Mirror US.
This article was originally written in English. Other language versions are produced using AI translation software, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio.
