The UK says thousands of Afghans have been brought to Britain under a secret resettlement program
The government now plans to close the route, which the media had been barred by a court order from disclosing.
'I have felt deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to Parliament and the public,' Defense Secretary John Healey said in the House of Commons.
Healey told lawmakers that a spreadsheet containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had applied to come to Britain after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was accidentally released in error in 2022 because of a defense official's email error, and extracts were later published online.
The then-Conservative government sought a court order barring disclosure of the leak, in an attempt to prevent the personal information being made public. The High Court issued a strict order known as a super injunction that barred anyone from revealing its existence. The government then set up a secret new program to resettle the Afghans.
The injunction was lifted on Tuesday in conjunction with a decision by Britain's current Labour Party government to make the program public. It said an independent review had found little evidence that the leaked data would expose Afghans to a greater risk of retribution from the country's Taliban rulers.
About 4,500 Afghans – 900 applicants and approximately 3,600 family members — have been brought to Britain under the secret program, and about 6,900 people are expected to be relocated by the time it closes, at a total cost of 850 million pounds ($1.1 billion).
About 36,000 more Afghans have been relocated to the U.K. under other resettlement routes.
Critics say that still leaves thousands more people who helped British troops as interpreters or in other roles at risk of torture, imprisonment or death.
British troops were sent to Afghanistan as part of a deployment against al-Qaida and Taliban forces in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. At the peak of the operation, there were almost 10,000 British troops in the country, mostly in Helmand province in the south.
Britain ended combat operations in 2014, and its remaining troops left Afghanistan in 2021 as the Taliban swept back to power, two decades after they were ousted.
The Taliban's return triggered chaotic scenes at Kabul Airport in August 2021 as Western nations rushed to evacuate citizens and Afghan employees.
Super injunctions are relatively rare, and their use is controversial. Unlike regular court injunctions, super injunctions bar reporting that they were even ordered The handful of cases in which they have come to light involved celebrities trying to prevent disclosures about their private lives.
This is the first known case of a super injunction being sought by the government. Healey said he was not aware of any others in existence.
Judge Martin Chamberlain, who ruled that the injunction should be lifted, said Tuesday at the High Court that the gag order had 'given rise to serious free speech concerns."
'The super injunction had the effect of completely shutting down the ordinary mechanisms of accountability, which operate in a democracy," he said. 'This led to what I describe as a 'scrutiny vacuum.''
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Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff Northeastern University, which admitted fewer than 900 foreign undergraduates in 2008, more than tripled that count to 2,900 students. International enrollment is 15 percent. Even small Augustana College, blocks from the Mississippi River in Illinois, enrolled nearly 500 international students last academic year, about 20 percent of its campus. That's up from about 2 percent a decade ago. Officials at the University of Massachusetts Amherst went hunting for students worldwide for another reason: declining number of US college-bound students as well as a shrinking pool of students from within the state, said Jim Roche, vice provost for enrollment management. Foreign students are treated similarly to out-of-state students, and both generate income for the university, because tuition and fees are double what Massachusetts residents pay. Even when the university gives them aid, a form of tuition discount, they still pay more than in-state students, Roche said. 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Three quarters of Dartmouth's nearly 670 international students receive financial aid, with an average aid amount of $84,170 annually, according to the data. Students crossed the campus of Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., last year. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press Now, at the post office in Hanover, N.H., where Dartmouth is located, local residents encounter chatter in a variety of foreign languages. And the college isn't just drawing traditionally wealthy students from China, Canada, England, and South Korea; it's getting more interest from African countries, India, and Kazakhstan, where students are more likely to need financial aid, said Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid. 'We have created this global microcosm here in this college town in the north woods of New Hampshire,' Coffin said in an interview. 'That's exciting.' Coffin has heard the criticisms that foreign students are taking away spots and resources from American undergraduates, but he said the university still largely educates the US-born. Pitting international students who need aid against low- and middle-income American students neglects that these schools still cater to the wealthy, said Anthony A. Jack, a BU associate professor and author of 'Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price.' The private donations that fund scholarships at elite schools including Harvard, also likely come from all over the world, he said. 'Financial aid should not have a citizenship requirement,' Jack said. Still, the political calculus has changed from a decade or two ago, said Robert Kelchen, who heads the University of Tennessee's department of educational leadership and policy studies. 'The idea of giving benefits to immigrants or just flat out international students is a very tough political fight,' he said. Earlier this summer, Trump suggested that Harvard should cap total international student enrollment at 15 percent; it's currently 28 percent. 'We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools; they can't get in because we have foreign students there,' Trump said. Trump's attacks aside, David A. Bell, a Princeton history professor who considers himself politically liberal, recently argued in a New York Times essay that American universities should seriously reconsider international recruitment. International students can bring benefits such as diverse viewpoints, increased academic excellence, and familial wealth, Bell said. But at top universities, where slots are limited and highly sought, they may make it harder for middle-class US students to get in, Bell said. 'We have to recognize the tradeoffs,' Bell said. 'There is a benefit to keeping the doors as wide open as possible to students from the United States.' Six months into the second Trump administration, universities are facing a reckoning, and it may end with fewer international students on campus. Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at
