By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nearly 1,660 Afghans authorized by the U.S. government to resettle in the United States, including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, are having their flights canceled under President Donald Trump’s order suspending U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and senior official said. a refugee resettlement advocate said Monday.
The group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the United States as well as Afghans at risk of reprisals from the Taliban because they fought for the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, a said Shawn VanDiver, head of the #AfghanEvac coalition of American veterans and advocacy groups. and the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the United States but who have yet to receive flights from Afghanistan or neighboring Pakistan, they said. they declared.
Trump made cracking down on immigration a major promise of his victorious 2024 election campaign, leaving the fate of U.S. refugee programs up in the air.
The White House and the State Department, which oversees U.S. refugee programs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The Afghans and the militants are panicking,” VanDiver said. “I’ve already had to charge my phone four times today because so many people are calling me.
“We warned them this was going to happen, but they did it anyway. We hope they reconsider,” he said of contacts with Trump’s transition team.
VanDiver’s organization is the main coalition working with the U.S. government to evacuate and resettle Afghans in the United States since the Taliban seized Kabul as the last U.S. forces left Afghanistan in August 2021 after two decades of war.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have been brought to the United States by former President Joe Biden’s administration since the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Kabul.
One of dozens of executive orders Trump was expected to sign after being sworn in for a second term on Monday included suspending U.S. refugee programs for at least four months, a new Trump administration official said, demanding anonymity.
“We know that this means that unaccompanied children, partner (Afghan) forces who trained, fought and died or were injured alongside our troops, and the families of active duty U.S. military personnel will be get stuck,” VanDiver said.
VanDiver and the U.S. official said Afghans allowed to resettle as refugees in the United States were being removed from manifests on flights they were scheduled to take from Kabul by April.
They include nearly 200 family members of active-duty Afghan U.S. military personnel who were born in the United States or Afghans who came to the United States, joined the military and became naturalized citizens, they said.
Also among those expelled from the flights are an unspecified number of Afghans who fought for the former U.S.-backed government in Kabul and some 200 unaccompanied children of Afghan refugees or Afghan parents whose children were brought alone in the United States during the American withdrawal, VanDiver and the American official said.
An unknown number of Afghans who were granted refugee status because they worked for U.S. contractors or U.S.-affiliated organizations are also in the group, they said.