More than 200,000 Afghans previously eligible to apply for asylum in the United States now find themselves without options or answers from the U.S. government, community advocates said.
On Donald Trump's first day back in office January, he ordered a halt to all refugee travel. This included thousands of Afghans and their families screened and approved by the State Department to relocate to the United States.
Jessica Bradley Rushing worked as a deputy director in the department's office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, or CARE. She said these Afghans are people who risked their lives to help the United States during its 20-year occupation of Afghanistan.
"They're just being abandoned," Bradley Rushing said.
This includes thousands still housed at U.S.-run sites in third-party countries, such as one in Doha, Qatar.
Operation Enduring Welcome was the Biden administration's Afghan relocation policy. Part of the operation included several temporary sites established by the State Department where Afghans who fled the country could live temporarily while their refugee or Special Immigrant Visa paperwork was processed.
Many of the more than 100,000 Afghans who made it to the U.S. since August 2021 came alone, hoping to bring their spouses, siblings, parents or children at a later date.
Bradley Rushing said there's little being done for them since Trump returned to office.
"I know people, literally personally, whose cases were right at the finish line on Jan. 20," she said. And now their families are stuck in Afghanistan, and they don't know when or if they'll ever be reunited."
Mohammad Rahimi worked as an attorney in Afghanistan with the U.S. Army and later served in the Afghan government. He immigrated to the U.S. more than a decade ago and is now a U.S. citizen.
Living in El Cajon, he works with Afghan families across the country as executive director of nonprofit Afghan Family Services.
He said many in the community were hopeful their families could join them in the U.S.
"Unfortunately, with this travel ban ... this president killed that hope," Rahimi said. "So now, the majority of these Afghans who came to the United States but left part of their families in Afghanistan — they are hopeless, they are voiceless and they're unsupported."
Trump told a reporter last month he would "take care" of the Afghans who worked with the U.S.
A senior administration official told KPBS last week the president is committed to protecting Afghans "while ensuring rigorous security standards."
Shawn VanDiver is president and co-founder of #AfghanEvac, a nonprofit that helps Afghans with relocation. During the Biden administration he worked with people from the State Department to craft Operation Enduring Welcome.
"Enduring Welcome is, by miles and miles, the safest, most secure legal immigration program in our country's history," VanDiver said. "We built it that way on purpose. We wanted to build this thing to stand the test of time and stand any sort of security scrutiny. And we did."
The January suspension of refugee resettlement was followed by a travel and VISA ban that included Afghanistan and the end of Temporary Protected Status for Afghans. Last month the U.S. State Department closed the CARE office and its staff were reportedly among the 1,300 department workers laid off July 11.
Enduring Welcome ends on Sept. 30.
A State Department spokesperson said the functions of the CARE office were assigned to another office, part of a reorganization to make the department "more efficient and more focused on an America First foreign policy."
UC San Diego professor Barbara Walter studies extremist movements. Her book "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them" explores threats to American democracy.
"Trump and the MAGA movement, is really underneath — in part — a white Christian nationalist movement," Walter said. "And when they say 'American First,' one of the things that's included in that, is that America remains dominated by white, Christian ... men."
To Walter, the plight of Afghans and other immigrant groups should be understood as part of a broader authoritarian project under Trump. This include threats to various universities, the deployment of National Guard troops to cities and attacks on the free press.
Demographic trends in the U.S. suggest white people will no longer be a majority of the population in about 20 years, she said.
"One of the things he absolutely has to do to stop that, is to prevent any nonwhite, non-Christian immigrants from coming to this country," Walter said. "And of course, that would include Afghanistan."
She said the recent arrest of immigrants at routine court hearings, including that of a former Afghan interpreter in San Diego, are designed to strike fear in immigrant communities.
If an immigrant misses their court date, they immediately become deportable. But if they come to court, they risk arrest — even if they are in the country legally.
"This whole thing of trying to criminalize these legal Afghan refugees trying to ... force others who otherwise would fulfill the terms to break them?" Walters said. "That's a classic tactic of authoritarians. It's weaponizing government against its citizens when in fact — in a democracy — government should be doing the exact opposite."
The Trump administration is considering allowing as many at 40,000 refugees into the U.S. next year, according to Reuters. Most of those spots — 30,000 — are reserved for white South Africans. Some would be for Afghans, according to the report.
Bradley Rushing now works with VanDiver at #AfghanEvac. She said almost 270,000 Afghans have been impacted by the changes in U.S. policy toward them without guidance on where to turn next.
"These are people who risked their lives on a daily basis because they believed in the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, and we know who they are," she said. "People who have at least, deserve a shot at having their case processed. Not all of those cases will get approved, but they at least deserve a shot to go through the process."
When asked about Afghan policy, the White House said Special Immigrant Visa processing is ongoing with "hundreds" of decisions per week.
VanDiver said during the Biden administration, that number was in the thousands per week.
"It's functionally useless if there's an SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) exemption but there's no support for those individuals to get out of Afghanistan to a third country where they can actually finish their processing," VanDiver said. "And then there's no support for them when they need to travel here and when they need to resettle here."
People in the Afghan community are supportive of the U.S. and its values, Rahimi said. That's why they risked their lives during the occupation.
"But this situation right now, this rush, this anger, this anti-immigration and anti-immigrant policies ... and decisions of this current administration is sickening," he said. "It is painful."
With roughly a quarter-million Afghans somewhere in the relocation pipeline, VanDiver said his organization will continue to press Congress to pass legislation to restart relocation.
