Kashmiri Filmmaker Detained By ICE Since September 24

WASHINGTON DC: Arfat Sheikh, the award-winning Kashmiri director of Saffron Kingdom, is expected to walk free on Wednesday after an immigration court on Tuesday granted him bond after which his detention will be quashed.

Sheikh, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at Washington Dulles International Airport on 24 September, appeared before the court on 6 October, where his lawyer argued his case. Following the ruling, the bond money was deposited, and he is likely to be released from the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia, on Wednesday.

"Tara, Tara. This is ICE"

Sheikh had flown in from San Francisco with his friend and colleague, the filmmaker and author Tara Dorabji. The two were on their way to an "Art as Resistance" event at Busboys and Poets in Washington DC, where Dorabji was due to speak on September 26 about the experiences of survivors of torture in Kashmir.

They never made it. Talking to the Kashmir Times, Dorabji described the moment Sheikh was taken.

"When we landed at Dulles, I was sitting towards the back of the plane, and Arfat exited before me. As I got off the plane, I walked by Arfat, without realizing that he had been pulled aside on the jetway," she said.

"Arfat called out to me, and I turned around. He was surrounded by numerous men. Arfat said to me, 'Tara, Tara. This is ICE. They have come for me.'"

"The men were in plain clothes and not wearing any uniforms that indicated that they were federal agents. During the entire interaction, I never saw any of the men present a warrant or say why they were taking Arfat."

"They took Arfat Sheikh off the jetway onto the tarmac. He did not resist. I was shaking and could barely move."

His friends and supporters have said he was taken "even as he presented his immigration paperwork".

Dorabji, whose own documentary series on human rights defenders in Kashmir has won awards at more than a dozen festivals, said the detention was a bitter irony for a man who had spent years bringing stories of abuse in conflict zones to international audiences.

"It is devastating that someone who spent years bringing stories of human rights violations in war-torn regions to international audiences is in ICE detention, facing the conditions Arfat has dedicated his life to end," she said.

"Arfat continues to show courage, his love for life, and his gift for creating community."

In the statement, issued before Tuesday's hearing, Dorabji had demanded his freedom: "Arfat Sheikh must be released from detention immediately and returned to his home and community."

Small Amount of Justice Served, Says Lawyer

Hassan Ahmad, his lawyer, told the Kashmir Times that Arfat is likely to be released tomorrow after being granted a bond by the Virginia Immigration Court. “His detention will be quashed as soon as his bond is posted,” Ahmad said.

He said that there was no reason why Arfat was picked up. “He has no criminal record. He has a pending immigration application which he should have been allowed to pursue without being detained and without upending his life,” Ahmad said.

Regarding ICE’s “unwarranted action”, the lawyer said, “it appears they had advanced knowledge and they were waiting at the airport to take him into custody.”

Placing Arfat’s detention in the larger landscape of hundreds of ICE detentions since Donald Trump took over as President of the United States, he said, it is unjust to pick up people without any criminal record, without any reason, and spend taxpayers' money to keep them detained. “The only one benefiting from it is the private prisons industry,” Ahmad said, adding that several detainees spend months in prison before they get released or are deported.

“Today, in Arfat’s case, a small amount of justice has been served.”

Dr Ali Mohammed Mir, President of Daffodil Studios that produced Arfat’s Saffron Kingdom, shared Hassan Ahmad’s suspicion that the detention appeared to be premeditated. “It seems they were ready for him. As soon as he got off the plane, the ICE officials in plainclothes asked Arfat to accompany him and thereafter he was detained.”

He, however, said he had no idea why they were following him. “There’s nothing against him,” he told the Kashmir Times, hoping to meet Arfat after his release on Wednesday.

“He’s spent two weeks of agony in custody but after the court hearing, he appeared fine.”

A son's unanswered question

Sheikh's work is rooted in a personal loss. In July 2003, his father, Ghulam Nabi Sheikh, a celebrated Kashmiri singer, disappeared while travelling by train from Jammu to Delhi with his daughter. Punjab Police said he had fallen from the train and died, and cremated his body within about ten hours of finding it, contrary to standard procedure. The family alleged he was a victim of enforced disappearance and killing. Years of litigation brought no answers and no justice.

Arfat was 16 then. Speaking to Kashmir Times in January 2025, he recalled that the family were left feeling "powerless and robbed of agency".

He later left Kashmir to study, and said he lived in a kind of bubble until he returned to make documentaries for an NGO. Travelling across the valley, he heard story after story of torture, disappearance and grief, and the scale of it, he said, overwhelmed him. It reignited both the memory of his father and a determination to tell Kashmir's story to the world.

In 2019, he came to the US to study for a master's in filmmaking in Atlanta. He was granted his US visa on the same day the Indian government revoked Jammu and Kashmir's constitutional autonomy, split it into two federally ruled territories, and imposed a sweeping communications blackout and lockdown.

Saffron Kingdom

Saffron Kingdom, Sheikh's first feature, which he wrote, produced and directed under Daffodil Studios, follows Masrat, a woman who flees Kashmir with her son Rizwan after her husband is abducted by the Indian army and disappears in custody. The film traces their attempt to rebuild their lives in Atlanta while carrying the trauma of insurgency, displacement and the 2019 revocation of Kashmir's autonomy. It also recalls the 1990 Gawkadal massacre, in which dozens of protesters were killed by Indian paramilitary forces in Srinagar.

The title carries a double meaning. Saffron is one of Kashmir's most famous crops, and also the colour associated with India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Sheikh shot the film largely in and around Atlanta, recreating Kashmiri landscapes, including saffron fields, because he said it would have been impossible to make it in Kashmir under current conditions. He told Kashmir Times he had wanted Kashmiri-speaking actors, but members of the diaspora were too frightened to be associated with the project, and some who agreed later withdrew.

Instead, he assembled an international cast and crew, more than half of them women, including Aramean, Kurdish, Latino and Black artists, many with histories of oppression in their own communities. He said the result was a film that built connections across borders and was larger than the one he had set out to make.

The film was screened in theatres, universities and cultural institutions in the US and abroad, and is available on the Watermelon Pictures streaming platform in more than 175 countries. It was selected for the Rome International Film Festival, won awards at the LA Film & Documentary Awards and the Wake Forest Film Festival, among others, and in 2025 Sheikh was named an Emerging Filmmaker Activist at the Teaneck International Film Festival.

"Authorised to live and work"

According to a GoFundMe campaign launched on his behalf, Sheikh "entered the United States legally on a student visa to pursue graduate studies in film at Georgia State University".

"He has a pending immigration application and is authorised to live and work in the United States," it said.

The campaign, started by "a community of friends, colleagues, Americans, and family united to bring Arfat Sheikh home", is seeking to raise $50,000 for his legal representation.