Special: Trump to deport nearly 1,660 Afghan refugees, US official says Reuters Advocate
By Jonathan Laday
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Flights of about 1,660 Afghans allowed to settle in the United States have been canceled amid President Donald Trump’s suspension of U.S. refugee programs. A leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.
The group includes teenagers waiting to be reunited with their families in the U.S. and Afghans at risk of retribution by the Taliban because they fought for the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, said Sean Vandiver, head of #AfghanistanEvac, a coalition of US veterans and advocacy groups. And the U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity.
He said the US decision concerned thousands of other Afghans who were allowed to settle in the United States as refugees but were not assigned a flight from Afghanistan or neighboring Pakistan.
Trump has made immigration a big promise for his victorious 2024 election campaign, leaving the fate of America’s immigration programs up in the air.
The White House and the State Department, which oversees US immigration programs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Afghans and advocates are panicking,” Vandiver said. “I had to charge my phone four times today because so many are calling me.”
“We warned them this was going to happen, but they did it,” he said of his dealings with Trump’s transition team.
Vandiver is the main coalition working with the U.S. government to get the last U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by August 2021 after two decades of war, after the Taliban took control of Kabul.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have immigrated to the United States since the tumultuous withdrawal of US troops from Kabul under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
One of dozens of executive orders Trump is expected to sign during his second swearing-in on Monday, suspending US immigration programs for at least four months.
The new White House website says Trump is “ending refugee resettlement, disrupting community safety and resources after communities are forced to house large and unsustainable numbers of immigrants.”
“We know that means unaccompanied children, families of (Afghan) partner forces and active-duty U.S. service members who have trained, fought and died or been injured alongside our troops will be left stranded,” Vandiver said.
Vandiver and the U.S. official said Afghans who had been granted asylum in the U.S. were being removed from flight schedules that were supposed to take them from Kabul through April.
Minority Democrats on the House Foreign Relations Committee condemned the move, writing in an op-ed on X: “This is what abandonment looks like.” Leaving vetted, proven Afghan allies at the mercy of the Taliban is shameful.
They said there are about 200 Afghan-American active duty U.S. service members or Afghans who have come to the U.S., joined the military and are naturalized citizens.
An unknown number of Afghans who fought for the former US support for the Kabul government and about 200 children of Afghan refugees or Afghan parents were brought to the United States alone when their children left the United States, Vandiver and US officials said.
He said the group included an unknown number of Afghans who qualified for immigration because of working for US contractors or US-linked organizations.
