Texas-Based Afghan National Sentenced to 35 Years for Child Exploitation

The U.S. Department of Justice in Washington on April 27, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

An Afghan national residing in Texas was sentenced to 420 months in prison on Tuesday for possessing and producing child pornography, according to a statement from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Badshah Sahi, 21, of Arlington, was arrested in February last year. Sahi was found to have sexually exploited multiple children. At the time of arrest, authorities searched Sahi’s phone and found several explicit videos and images, along with communications with multiple minors.

Law enforcement authorities believed Sahi was in contact with a 14-year-old girl, would pick her up from home, and take her to multiple locations to sexually assault the child, the DOJ said in an Oct. 1 statement.

In another instance, Sahi drove to the location of a 15-year-old girl from San Marcos, Texas, and recorded himself sexually assaulting the minor, the DOJ said. In a separate case, Sahi came into contact with a 10-year-old minor through the gaming platform Roblox, coercing the child to create and send sexually explicit videos.

On April 1, Sahi pleaded guilty to the charges of possession and production of child pornography.

“Working with our law enforcement partners, we were able to remove him from the local community and ensure he spends the next 35 years behind bars where he won’t be able to harm any more children,” Antwoine Jones, Homeland Security Investigations Dallas acting special agent in charge, said in the statement.

“This dangerous child sex offender was recklessly released into the United States without proper vetting during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and went on to prey on innocent children both here in North Texas and online,” Jones said.

The report detailed the analysis of data related to Operation Allies Welcome, initiated in the aftermath of the withdrawal to resettle around 97,000 Afghan nationals in the United States.

An analysis of 678 samples from 13,682 adjudicated applications filed by Afghans resettled in the United States under the program found a 40 percent error rate in these files.

This includes two cases related to potential inadmissibility on terrorism-related grounds, according to the report.

Following the attack, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) decided to consider country-specific factors when vetting foreigners from 19 nations deemed to be from high-risk countries, including Afghanistan.

USCIS Director Joseph Edlow in the statement accused the previous administration of spending “the last four years dismantling basic vetting and screening standards, prioritizing the rapid resettlement of aliens from high-risk countries over the safety of American citizens.”