S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. On today's show , a local veteran fights back against the cancellation of TPS for Afghanistan. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. The Department of Homeland Security recently announced it will terminate Temporary Protected Status , or TPS , for Afghanistan , effective July 12th. This putting thousands of evacuated Afghans at risk of being deported back to their homeland , which is still under Taliban rule. One of the leading organizations that helped during the withdrawal from Afghanistan has ties to San Diego. The organization is called Afghan Evac. And joining us today is their founder and president , Sean Vandiver. Sean , welcome to the show again.
S2: Thanks so much for having me today , Jade. Excited to be back here at KPBS.
S1: Glad to have you. So all right. The big recent news here is the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will terminate TPS for Afghanistan.
S2: We don't have data down to the granular level of like who it is and , you know , by name and when they arrived. But we know that these are this is impacting folks that served alongside us in all sorts of different roles. Right ? Certainly alongside of our military , alongside of our diplomats , folks who are lawyers and prosecutors put the Taliban away. It affects anybody and Afghan students , right ? TPS is for people who are already here , and something happens in their country , so they can't go back. So we had brought them here. They can't arrive under TPS. They arrived under parole. And then later on when parole expired , they applied for TPS. If your visa was about to expire and you're about to have to go back as a student , you might apply for TPS to say , hey , it's not. I'm a woman , and I was learning rocketry in the United States of America. It's not safe for me to go back because the Taliban doesn't like it when women are learning things. Wow.
S1: Wow.
S2: We said , hey , until things calmed down there , you can you can rest easy that you have refuge here in the United States. What's being lost is that we brought a lot of these people here. We put people on planes. In August of 2021. We flew them to our country and we said , hey , our immigration system sucks. It's going to take a while to get this worked out , but until then , you're safe here and now. President Trump came in and said , get out of here. Unless you're a white guy from South Africa.
S1: That part.
S2: Um , the best advice that I can give to anybody is that if you're worried , talk to an immigration attorney. You can look them up at Afghani Resources. Uh , I lr the American Immigration Lawyers Association is the best resource for getting tailored help to your case and immigration law. So , you know , just it's very complex. And we don't have an administration where you can take chances with your future. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. I mean , can you provide some context. Right. Of of how we got to this point , the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that happened between 2020. 2021.
S2: There's a few different eras. Some eras in this withdrawal are August 2021 the Taliban storming through. The US government looks around and goes , what do we do ? And they start putting people on planes to bring them here. That actually had started. They had started evacuating Special Immigrant visa holders in about July. But August is when they really ramped up. And it was chaotic , right. They the airports were sort of stormed. They got a bunch of people in the gates and they put them on plane. Some of those folks had civvy approval. Some of them did not. So there's been a lot of like getting that situated between September 1st and around December , there was no US government effort to get people out. We were working with the United States government to stand that up , and what we demanded was a multi-year , end to end , comprehensive plan to meet the moment for a wartime allies. And I got to give credit words to President Biden met the moment they established what we call enduring welcome , which is the first time our country has ever kept our promise to our wartime allies. And what enduring welcome did was it's the single most secure immigration pathway our country has ever seen. They make sure they're vetted. They make sure that they're eligible , both refugees and special visa holders. So the refugee track and the consular track , uh , get to go from Afghanistan on a flight to a third country after a bunch of vetting. Once they're in that third country , they go through a bunch more vetting and medical screening and all sorts of other stuff. Then they come here once housing is secured. Once they're here , they have a durable status. So these folks that have been coming through and during welcome are not impacted by TPS. And we we did that on purpose. Right. We didn't want people that were coming here as part of enduring welcome , the multi-year plan to be subject to the whims of an administration that maybe wasn't going to be , uh , favorable to them. Uh , all told , over the course since August of 2021 through January 20th , 2025. We got about 200,000 Afghans here , wartime allies who stood by us. Um , but there were a bunch of people that were in transit at that point. And here's what happened to them. About 3000 people got stuck at a base in Qatar. About a thousand got stuck at a base in Albania. Um , others got stuck in other places around the world. Uh , our group and a bunch of others were able to help self-fund people who had visas in their passports already and were awaiting flights , but refugees were stopped completely by the president on January 20th. Executive orders , uh , Executive Order 14163 stopped all refugee processing , which means there are 1500 people that are still stuck in Qatar. Um , 200 of those folks are family of active duty military.
S1:
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S1: Has that caused.
S2: People are so scared. Right. We had told them and there's a bunch of these people. There's 211,000 people in the pipeline in Afghanistan , and 50,000 people in the pipeline outside of Afghanistan. And every single one of them is scared. They don't know what to expect. About 10 to 15,000 of these folks are family reunification cases. So these are families that we ripped apart and they can't get to their loved ones , which means they can't continue their lives. To a person , all of these people were told the United States government has your back. We're going to get you out of Afghanistan. We're going to get you to the United States. You can bank on it. And January 20th , President Trump wiped it all away. And it's actually worse than that. They paused it. And now people are just waiting and we're communicating with them. But the United States government isn't. And in fact , just last Friday , the State Department sent out an erroneous message to 76 cases saying , hey , we think we're going to be moving your case forward. And then hours later , they had to tell them , oh my God , that was a testing error. We're so sorry. So now those people thought that there was a change in policy. Now , chances are they believe there's a change in policy coming. When it was a simple mistake , but a mistake of people that are grasping at anything that might give them hope. And it's quite unconscionable. Yeah.
S3: Yeah.
S1:
S2: We've seen court cases where the judges have said you have to start processing refugees again. And the Trump administration has said , oh , we can't. It's too complex. We fired everybody. We we canceled all the contracts. We can't do it. It's too hard. And yet they were able to figure out how to process these folks in record time. Folks who I mean , listeners should look up the , uh , the history of South Africa on their own. But I think it's a stretch to say that these folks are fleeing persecution to the tune of , uh , or equal to that of our African allies or others. And the important thing about TPS , like one of the most important things about TPS and refugee status is , um , TPS is given to countries that have , you know , bad conditions. You can't go back. Well , by ending TPS. Secretary Nome , Secretary Rubio , the president are saying that everything's fine in Afghanistan , that they could go back. So I'm here to issue a challenge to Secretary Nome if she hears this. Um , I've already lined up the logistics. I've already lined up the flight. I've already lined up lodging. If she would like to go to Afghanistan with me , we're ready to rock. If she's safe as a woman. If she thinks she can go to Afghanistan. By all means. Madam Secretary , let's go.
S1:
S2: The State Department says it is not safe to go there. So obviously I've lined up the logistics here. We can do it. It's not safe. It would be very stupid of us to go to Afghanistan , and I don't know why we would put our wartime allies in danger who face certain death if they go back , if we're not willing.
S3: To do it.
S1:
S2: And we initially thought that this was all a big misunderstanding. We thought that they were supportive of of Afghans. Right. Like during his last administration , President Trump welcomed Afghans into the white House during Medal of Honor ceremonies and lauded their service. He negotiated the Doha Agreement. He brought the Taliban to Camp David and said , hey , we need to get this thing hammered out. Um , he and his guy , Khalilzad are the ones that negotiated this. Um , and then he had a lot to say about Joe Biden's failures during the administration , during the withdrawal. They brought it up every single day of the RNC. They brought it up at every single debate. They marched out the families of our final 13 fallen. Uh , the folks that died at Abbey gate. They marched them out on the stage at the RNC. So I thought that surely President Trump would protect this bipartisan , beloved effort to help allies who have stood beside us. And what I thought was an unintended consequence , it seems like , is a deliberate strategy to throw our wartime allies under the bus and cause real , irreparable harm to our veterans community. Gosh.
S1: Gosh. And from what you alluded to before , going back to that , uh , home country , going back to Afghanistan could be a matter of life and death for a lot of people and families.
S2: I mean , we know that people have been hunted down. We know that people have been killed. We know that it is not safe. In fact , Chairman Brian Mast of the House Foreign Affairs Committee last year , Last January , he pulled together a roundtable on Taliban reprisals. And he he himself gave a bunch of different examples. On Friday , I posted a clip of that video where he gave specific examples of Afghans that had been killed , hunted down and harmed or killed. And I and , you know , I hope that this week we'll see him ask about that during the budget hearings.
S1: So what's next ? What's next for your involvement in this battle ? And and what do you expect to see ? Sure.
S2: So we're going to keep fighting. We're going to keep pushing. We're going to keep elevating the voices of our wartime allies. We're going to keep pressuring members of Congress , local government , anybody who has a stake in this. And we're going to keep raising the voices of veterans. If your listeners want to engage , they can they can go to our website , engage , engage , and they can sign up to get our regular updates. It is so important for our national security and for our national honor that we continue this effort. We cannot let these folks die in silence.
S1: I've been speaking with Sean Vandiver , founder and president of Afghan Evac. Sean , as always , thanks for being here.
S2: Thank you so much , Jade. Always a pleasure.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
