SRINAGAR: Award-winning Kashmiri filmmaker Arfat Sheikh has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Washington Dulles International Airport, triggering a campaign by friends, colleagues and supporters seeking his immediate release and legal assistance.
Sheikh, 42, was detained on September 24 as he arrived at Dulles while travelling to Washington, DC, to participate in an Art as Resistance panel at Busboys and Poets, according to the Free Arfat Sheikh campaign. He is currently being held at the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia.
The campaign said Sheikh was travelling with author and filmmaker Tara Dorabji when he was detained. It alleged that several ICE agents surrounded Sheikh after he stepped off the aircraft and arrested him without a warrant, despite his presenting his immigration documents. Dorabji was allowed to proceed to Washington.
There has been no official comment from ICE or the US Department of Homeland Security on Sheikh’s detention.
Sheikh entered the United States legally in 2019 on a student visa to pursue graduate studies in film at Georgia State University. He subsequently applied for asylum in 2020 and, according to his supporters, has a pending immigration application and holds authorisation to live and work in the US.
He was scheduled to appear before an immigration judge on October 6 for a procedural hearing and bond assessment, according to the campaign.
Born in 1984 and raised in Srinagar, Sheikh has built a career as a filmmaker, writer and producer whose work has focused on Kashmir, displacement, identity, conflict and human rights.
His debut feature film, Saffron Kingdom, traces a Kashmiri family’s journey from Srinagar in the 1990s to the US state of Georgia in 2019. The film has been screened in more than 100 theatres and made available in 175 countries, according to his supporters.
Saffron Kingdom won Best Feature Film at several independent film festivals, including the Chicago Filmmakers Awards, Los Angeles Film and Documentary Awards, Wake Forest Film Festival and Anatolian International Film Awards. Sheikh was also recognised as an Emerging Filmmaker Activist at the Teaneck International Film Festival in 2025.
In an interview in 2024, Sheikh said he had been motivated to make the film by what he regarded as the absence of Kashmiri voices in mainstream portrayals of the region.
The detention has prompted an online campaign, Free Arfat Sheikh, with supporters appealing to US lawmakers and raising money for his legal representation and immediate community needs. A GoFundMe campaign has set a target of $50,000.
Friends have described Sheikh as an artist whose filmmaking grew out of his experiences of growing up in Kashmir during the turbulent 1990s.
His father, Ghulam Nabi Sheikh, was a celebrated Kashmiri folk singer who also headed music at Radio Kashmir and was popularly known as Kashmir’s Mehdi Hassan. He disappeared in 2003 while travelling by train from Jammu to New Delhi.
Sheikh has spoken publicly about the impact of his family’s experiences on his filmmaking and said his work was intended to provide a medium for stories from Kashmir that he felt had remained under-represented.
His detention comes amid a sharp increase in immigration enforcement in the United States, with ICE recording tens of thousands of arrests during the summer. Sheikh’s supporters have called for his release and urged his legal case to be allowed to proceed while he remains under his pending immigration application.
