One of the points Donald Trump made repeatedly on the campaign trail is that other nations having been refusing to accept deportation of their citizens who have been convicted of felonies within the United States. His opponents have been claiming that such assertions are false. Having witnessed one such episode firsthand, I can confidently say that in this case, Trump is correct.

I served as an assistant United States attorney (federal prosecutor) for over 25 years before retiring in late 2015. The last twenty years of that career were spent in the Western District of Missouri, with my office in Kansas City. In 2005, I prosecuted a defendant named Abdul Asalati. Asalati was born in Afghanistan, had come to the United States at some point, and had never taken the steps to become an American citizen. In short, he was and remains a citizen of Afghanistan.