Washington’s Broken Promises Leave Afghan Allies in Limbo
Following the August 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the Afghan allies—including interpreters, government professionals, media members, and military personnel—who supported U.S. efforts to bring democracy to their country have lived in fear of Taliban reprisal inside their homeland. Hundreds of thousands applied for visas or sought other forms of legal status in the U.S. and began the process of finding safety.
Over three years later, up to 140,000 primary applicants—and their spouses and unmarried children under the age of 21—were mired in slow-moving processing pipelines when a pair of January 20 executive orders from President Donald Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 90 days and canceled the foreign funding that supports Afghans in transit from overseas processing hubs. A January 24 stop-work order from the State Department dealt a further blow, ending resettlement assistance for new arrivals in the U.S.
On March 14, The New York Times published a draft copy of a State Department travel ban that would end all travel to the U.S. from about a dozen countries, including Afghanistan. Three days later, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce denied that such a list existed. However, at a press briefing on March 31, Bruce responded to questions about the travel ban by saying, “Because there’s not a date, it doesn’t mean that it’s not being worked on.”
Afghans who arrived in the U.S. after 2021 are also experiencing immense strain as news has spread of deportations, parole revocation, and a pause in green card issuance.
Further complicating their struggles, on April 11, Department of Homeland Security officials announced the end of temporary protected status (TPS) for Afghans. An estimated 9,000 Afghans have used TPS to find safety in the U.S. while applying for asylum or another status. When the TPS designation runs out in May, they will be under threat of forced return to a country where the Taliban have stripped women of basic human rights and continue to target their former enemies—our allies—for death.
These moves have signaled a marked change in the posture toward our allies, not only impacting their futures but also affecting the Americans who supported them.
The USRAP Suspended
Afghan allies who are known to the U.S. government can be submitted to the USRAP by the entities that employed or can vouch for them. These include Afghans in the Priority 1 and Priority 2 categories who worked for the Afghan military and government, media institutions, or judicial staff.
Afghans who were separated from their families during or after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan have reunification cases that may be classified under the Priority 1 or Priority 3 categories, according to founder and president of the #AfghanEvac coalition, Shawn VanDiver.
Trump’s January 20 executive order suspended resettlement under each of those categories.
The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) quickly challenged the USRAP suspension, filing Pacito v. Trump on behalf of refugee resettlement groups and individual clients on February 10. A judge ruled in IRAP’s favor on February 25, placing an injunction on the suspension. The judge later ordered the federal government to provide updates demonstrating its compliance with the injunction.
IRAP is embroiled in legal battles over the government’s failure to comply with injunctions. Megan Hauptman, litigation fellow at IRAP, tells Reason that “the government’s recent actions not only demonstrate non-compliance with court orders, but open defiance,” which “wreaks daily harm on refugees and the organizations that serve them.”
On April 11, Whitehead granted in part IRAP’s motion to enforce the preliminary injunction. However, on April 21, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued clarifications about whom the government is required to process under the injunction, limiting the scope to approved refugees who already had their travel scheduled before Trump’s executive order blocked their arrival.
A State Department spokesperson would not comment on the status of the USRAP “as a matter of policy,” given ongoing litigation. They stated the department “continue[s] to comply with relevant court orders.”
All movement for USRAP applicants is halted due to the program’s suspension. However, one applicant and her family have been able to use the injunction to enter the U.S., thanks to a global boarding letter issued by the State Department in December.
“The Department is actively considering the future of our Afghan relocation program and the Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts,” a State Department spokesperson says, adding that “no final decisions have been made.”
The State Department would not enumerate how many USRAP cases are currently open, citing “policy” and “protection of those individuals,” but in August 2024, the State Department said that of the 56,000 Afghan applicants referred to the USRAP, 28,000 primary applicants were still undergoing processing.
That creates uncertainty for Afghans awaiting resettlement in other countries, including Pakistan, where an estimated 700,000 Afghans fled in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal. Pakistan announced plans to expel “up to 3 million [Afghan] migrants by the end of the year,” reported Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Pakistan says this includes Afghans in resettlement pipelines. Thus far, 80,000 Afghans have been deported. It is unclear whether this includes Afghans with a path to resettlement in the U.S.
A State Department spokesperson says the department is in “close communication with the Government of Pakistan on the status of Afghan nationals in U.S. resettlement pathways.”
There is a particularly acute pain for Afghans in the U.S. who have waited over three years to be reunited with their families through the USRAP. John Moses, co-founder of the Massachusetts Afghan Alliance, says he is following several dozen reunification cases in Massachusetts and works directly on three cases in his own town.
Moses explains that a local Afghan high schooler has managed to become “one of the top wrestlers in the state” despite also supporting his father, who “is having nervous breakdowns” while his wife and daughters are “thousands of miles away.”
The young man’s father arrived in the U.S. because he drove a bus through Hamid Karzai International Airport to ferry our allies to safety. When U.S. operations ended, American military personnel told the driver that he could not be safely released into the crowds for fear that he might be killed by the Taliban. “He helped, and this is how we repaid him,” Moses laments.
Moses says that Trump’s executive orders harm not only Afghans but “all the Americans that support them,” particularly in reunification cases in which “the trauma spreads, because it’s continuous.”
“I don’t have the luxury of being hopeless,” Moses explains. “I just get to keep working.”
Nasrullah is a medical doctor who entered the U.S. through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program after supporting the U.S. mission in multiple capacities. Nasrullah’s family was submitted to the USRAP program on account of his prominent position with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Nasrullah’s family had cleared several stages of the process and was awaiting final travel arrangements when the USRAP was suspended. In the interim, Nasrullah was one of many USAID employees to lose his job when 5,200 of the agency’s 6,200 programs were cut. He explains that he now has no source of funds to help his parents pay their rent, and his parents risk deportation in Turkey.
“My hope to see or visit my parents is fading away,” Nasrullah says.
Nonprofit Steps in for SIV Applicants
The largest number of Afghans still in the processing queue for admission to the U.S. are applicants to the SIV program, designed to assist interpreters or employees of the U.S. government or U.S. contractors with at least a year of “faithful and valuable employment.” Per the latest Afghan SIV quarterly report, there were more than 128,000 primary applicants still in the processing pipeline as of October 2024. Not all applicants will qualify for an SIV. About 80,000 applicants remain in the first hurdle of processing, of whom an estimated 37 percent typically receive approval.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed that the program’s Chief of Mission approval, visa adjudication, consular interviews, and security vetting are ongoing.
Unlike applicants in USRAP pipelines who cannot leave third countries for transportation to the U.S. due to their program’s suspension,
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