Betrayed by US Again, Afghan Evacuees Stranded After Refugee Program Suspension

Back in 2020, President Donald Trump inked a deal with the Taliban for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The deal was noteworthy for a variety of reasons, among them Trump’s bypassing of the U.S.-backed Afghan government at the time. Many critics — including top U.S. military brass — would later say the deal set conditions for a botched U.S. withdrawal in 2021 and the Taliban’s quick return to power.

By then Trump was out of office, leaving the messy job of actually withdrawing the remaining U.S. forces in Afghanistan to the Biden administration. The final chaotic withdrawal in August 2021 was widely seen as a spectacular and deadly failure at the bitter end of a catastrophic war. President Joe Biden’s poll numbers took a hit and never recovered. In 2024, Trump bet voters would forget his deal with the Taliban and hammered Biden over the conditions of the withdrawal on the campaign trail.

Almost immediately after taking office this week, President Trump once again threw a wrench in the plans of Afghans seeking refuge from the Taliban. As part of a deluge of executive orders designed to stretch the limits of presidential power, Trump shut down the U.S. refugee resettlement program, leaving thousands of Afghan evacuees who are seeking safety in the U.S. stranded across the world.

About 1,600 Afghans who are vetted and cleared to resettle in the U.S. — including unaccompanied minors reuniting with family members and Afghans at risk of retribution from the Taliban for assisting the U.S. during the 20-year war — had their entry to the U.S. blocked. Some even had their flights to the U.S. canceled as a result of Trump’s new policy, according to Shawn VanDiver, director of the #AfghanEvac coalition of U.S. veterans and advocacy groups. The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that thousands of other refugees who were cleared to resettle are stranded across the globe as well.

“Our lives are in danger,” said Humayun Bayat, an Afghan refugee stuck in Pakistan, in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty this week. “We won’t be able to go to Afghanistan either because I worked against the Taliban.”

Early Wednesday morning, #AfghanEvac posted on social media an email sent overnight from the State Department indicating that the new administration had suspended refugee movement and case processing globally.

“Pausing refugee resettlement without exempting Afghan allies is not just a policy decision — it’s a betrayal of those who risked everything for America,” VanDiver said in an email.

VanDiver told Truthout that tens of thousands of other Afghans and their families are vetted and ready to resettle, or are in the process of being vetted for admission into the U.S. as refugees, but they are stuck in increasingly unfriendly countries such as Pakistan, where Afghans are under surveillance and increasingly targeted for deportation back to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

“The State Department’s sudden global pause leaves vetted Afghan refugees stranded, further endangering their lives and separating families who have waited years for reunification,” VanDiver said. “It really is a matter of national security; the word of the United States needs to be as good as gold and can’t be conditional or temporary.”

VanDiver said Trump’s order allows his secretary of state and secretary of Homeland Security to accept individual refugees into the U.S. on a case-by-case basis, but he doubts Trump administration will take the time to review and approve thousands of Afghan allies and their close family members. The order requires these top officials to advise the White House in 90 days on whether refugee admissions are in the national interest and should resume.

During the Biden administration, about 200,000 Afghans evacuees were vetted and resettled across the U.S. after leaving Afghanistan under programs meant to protect military interpreters, human rights activists, former civil servants, and other U.S. allies, according to VanDiver.

However, Afghan community groups in the U.S. fear these recent arrivals could be swept up in attacks on immigrants and Muslims by the Trump administration, and that their status as refugees rather than permanent residents might especially put them in peril. Arash Azizzada, an advocate for Afghan refugees and co-founder and executive director of Afghans For A Better Tomorrow, said Afghans are at risk of being caught in the massive surveillance, detention and deportation apparatus that has rapidly expanded under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“Both parties built a deportation machine that is going to target not just Afghans, but other immigrants as well,” Azizzada said. “Everywhere an Afghan turns in the world in order to seek safety or shelter, they are eventually targeted by surveillance and deported, and it could happen here for our community.”

Trump’s order does not apply to holders of Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), a class of visa created by Congress to allow military translators and others who worked for the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq to become permanent U.S. residents. However, U.S. veterans fighting for the safety of their comrades have complained about the limits of the SIV program for years. VanDiver said most Afghan evacuees did not receive SIVs, including fighters who trained with the U.S., family of U.S. service members and lawyers for the U.S.-backed government who prosecuted the Taliban.

Azizzada does not expect Trump to expand or respect the SIV program and other directives from Congress on immigration. Despite the risk of retaliation for helping the U.S. occupation, the Afghans stranded today are refugees, not SIV holders on a path to a green card.

A separate executive order issued by Trump requires federal agencies to increase vetting of all visa applications to the U.S. to the “maximum degree possible” in order to protect against “foreign terrorists” and “public safety threats.” Trump has long conflated Muslims with terrorists and immigrants with imagined threats to public safety. Azizzada said Afghan refugees could be targeted and denied entry, regardless of whether they assisted the U.S. in Afghanistan.

“I don’t think [Trump] cares about folks who qualify as Afghan allies, people who stood next to the U.S.,” Azizzada said. “If the Trump administration actively ends this pipeline to resettlement — which it looks like it will, it is moving forward with that — it will be another stab in the back of those left behind, our allies in Afghanistan, another deep betrayal by America for our community.”

During the final months and weeks of the Biden administration, advocacy groups put mounting pressure on officials to surge resources toward processing and resettling stranded Afghan refugees before Trump took office. However, Azizzada said the Biden team did not want to be reminded about the Afghans left behind, suggesting the administration’s reluctance to act was because the 2021 withdrawal was so politically damaging to the Biden-Harris reelection campaign.

“They were not forthcoming and transparent … we made a laundry list of demands and questions that would protect Afghans in the waning days of the Biden administration, and I can tell you they didn’t return most of our calls,” Azizzada said.

The Biden administration evacuated 124,000 Afghans during the withdrawal in 2021, but still needed time to vet and process them. Afghans ended up stranded for months at “lily pad” sites in Kosovo, Qatar, Pakistan, and other countries across the world, sometimes in what appeared to be prison-like conditions, according to internal documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to legal advocates earlier this month.

“Under the Biden administration, Afghans have been stranded at U.S.-facilitated sites for over three years, awaiting individualized case processing and family reunification,” said Sadaf Doost, the human rights program manager at the Abolitionist Law Center, in an email. “And now, because of the Biden administration’s lack of progress and prolonged holding of Afghan civilians, Afghans are subjected to further uncertainty.”

The dates on the documents range from 2021 to 2023; VanDiver said most Afghans have moved on from these holding sites but their future as refugees is once again in limbo due to Trump’s order. However, Doost said attorneys continue to request transparency about the sites and movement of Afghans that the Biden administration failed to provide.

“It is our understanding that Afghans still remain at these sites — information the government has a duty to provide to the public under the Freedom of Information Act as it relates to federal government activity,” Doost said.

The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001 became a blood-soaked boondoggle for two decades to come, but Azizzada said the U.S. legacy goes back more than 40 years to the late-President Jimmy Carter, who covertly armed opposition to a Soviet-backed government. The rise of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and bloody “war on terror” launched by President George W. Bush followed interventions made by Carter and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

“We’ve had 45-plus years of military intervention and military occupation … all this pain and all this suffering,” Azizzada said. “The U.S. is responsible for this harm and must repair this harm, and one way to repair this harm is to allow Afghans to seek safety in the United States.”