HERE’S WHAT’S IMPORTANT THIS WEEK

• We are demanding a correction from the podium, and publishing the letter in full

• Immigration judges were trained to deny more requests for additional time, known as continuances, and to grant shorter delays when they do

• The State Department paused immigrant visa appointments globally after a court told it to restart processing, and two court-ordered filings land today, including the Department’s August processing numbers

• 1,039 people are still at Camp As Sayliyah, with 22 days until the camp is supposed to close

• USCIS is switching to new editions of several common forms with no grace period. File an outdated version of the form, and USCIS will reject your application

• A pastor in San Antonio sat in a courtroom this week so an interpreter would not have to sit there alone

Start with the ways you can take action, then read the rest.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Read our letter to the State Department and share the clip. We are demanding a correction from the podium on four counts. Letter at afghanevac.org/correct-the-record, video here. Send both to your representative and both senators with one line: your constituents have answered this question.

• Enroll as a Battle Buddy at afghanevac.org/battle-buddies. Immigration hearings resumed today under the new continuance standards, and accompaniment matters more this month than it did last month. We have over a thousand people signed up. We need more.

• Write your members of Congress about the refugee admissions determination before October 1. The President is required by statute to set the fiscal year 2027 refugee ceiling before the fiscal year begins. Nothing has been announced with 24 days left. Ask that Afghans be included and that the number reflect the promise, not last year’s 17,500 floor. Visit afghanevac.org/count-them-in and let’s #CountThemIn

• Contact Congress about Camp As Sayliyah before September 30. Demand resumed processing and a published destination plan before the camp closes. Facts and scripts at afghanevac.org/cas.

“NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION”

Watch this one. A State Department official is asked, on camera, whether the United States has an obligation to people who were willing to fight and die for it. He answers, “But that is not the question before us currently.” Pressed, he says, “But it’s not the right question.” Then he explains what he takes the right question to be. The people at Camp As Sayliyah, he says, are “primarily a group of people that were either unvetted, brought there by other contractors, not based off of promises made from the United States.”

Every element of that is wrong, and the government’s own records prove it. The State Department built Camp As Sayliyah, standing up CARE Doha there in October 2022 to support Enduring Welcome, and it has run the camp since October 2023. The site operates on a U.S. Army contract now worth roughly $411 million. Those are not our figures. They are the Defense Department Inspector General’s. And the Lead Inspector General told Congress these Afghans were “relocated by the U.S. Government to U.S.-managed platforms.” The contractors that official pointed at were executing an American government contract, because the American government wrote it, awarded it, and paid for it.

On vetting, the record is not complicated.

• The camp exists to vet people. The Lead Inspector General called Camp As Sayliyah the place “where thousands of Afghans were processed en route to the United States.”

• Most of them did not come out in the August 2021 airlift. They came later, through Enduring Welcome, which did not launch until October 2022. Anyone invoking the chaos of the withdrawal to describe this population is describing different people, in a different year, under a different process.

• They were screened before they boarded. Vetting, biometrics, and medical screening were completed in Kabul, on the ground, before anyone got on a plane. The full process is laid out at afghanevac.org/vetting.

• The screening worked. An Inspector General audit found a watchlist match rate of six hundredths of one percent among evacuees.

And residents of that camp have received denials. A denial is an adjudication. It is the finished product of a review this Department ran, in a file this Department opened. You cannot deny an application you never examined. Every denial issued there is proof the screening happened, which means the Department is either wrong about the vetting or it has been issuing determinations on people it never screened. There is no third option.

So today we are sending the Department a letter demanding a correction from the podium, and publishing it in full. We are asking for four things. Correct the Camp As Sayliyah characterization. Answer the obligation question the official refused. Stop blaming the November 2025 shutdown of Afghan processing on a prior administration’s vetting, when this administration approved that shooter’s asylum in April 2025. And disclose whether the Department has changed who counts as the family of an American service member. Parents and siblings were approved through a Defense Department program because their relationship to an American in uniform put them in danger. That danger did not change when the internal guidance did.

None of this is abstract. The same broadcast tells the story of Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, who served alongside U.S. Army Special Forces for nine years. ICE took him from outside his Dallas apartment in March as he was putting his children in the car for school. He was dead in American custody in under 24 hours, and six months on, no government agency has called his family.

Instead of asking the government what it thinks, we asked the country.

See the poll

• 84% say the United States should keep its commitments to Afghan allies and their families

• 73% say Afghan mission partners should be allowed to remain here while their cases are processed

• 72% want a permanent wartime allies program rather than improvisation after the fact

• 63% oppose deporting them or shipping them to third countries

• 83% agree that no American in uniform should have to leave family behind, and among military households, 73% hold that view strongly

Why it matters A spokesperson’s job is to state the government’s position accurately. It is our job to remind them when they are doing the opposite.

See the letter

THEY TOLD THE JUDGES TO RUN THE CLOCK

On September 2, the Executive Office for Immigration Review convened hundreds of immigration judges for a mandatory virtual training titled “Motions to Continue: Efficiently Advancing Cases to Completion.” The Guardian reported it on September 4. The American Immigration Lawyers Association obtained the slides, which the Department of Justice has not posted publicly. The instruction was straightforward. Grant fewer continuances, and grant them for less time.

Read what the slides actually say. Judges were told that “assertion alone that more preparation time is needed does not establish good cause,” and to be skeptical when someone asks for more time because another government application is still pending. They were also told that a lawyer who takes on more cases than she can responsibly handle may be referred to EOIR disciplinary counsel for possible sanction. One person familiar with the training described its message to The Guardian this way. “There is no room to be kind; there is only urgency to make them leave, one way or the other.”

Here is why that lands on Afghan allies. Thousands are in removal proceedings while the government sits on the very applications that would resolve their cases. USCIS froze adjudications. State stopped issuing visas. Chief of Mission decisions are running at a fraction of what a federal judge ordered. The continuance is the only tool a person has to say to an immigration judge, my case is pending, please do not deport me while the government finishes the work it promised to do. The administration froze the paperwork with one hand and is closing the escape hatch with the other. That is not a backlog. It is a vise, built on purpose.

The government’s own training says what this costs. Between 2019 and 2024, 25% of immigrants with a lawyer were ordered removed. More than 60% of those without one were. Judges have already begun applying the new standards, and the hearing calendar restarted today. We are asking Congress to demand the slides be made public, practitioners to preserve the record on every denial, and every one of you who can sit in a courtroom to sign up for Battle Buddies this week.

STATE ANSWERED A COURT ORDER BY PAUSING VISAS WORLDWIDE

Since August 21, the State Department and a federal court have been in a fast-moving back-and-forth over whether the Department is complying with an order to restart immigrant visa processing.

That day, Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York set aside the Department’s blanket suspension of immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries as contrary to law, and judgment was entered August 24. The Department’s response was a new worldwide pause on immigrant visa appointments, which it attributed to consular officer training. Plaintiffs moved to enforce on August 26, and on August 31 Judge Vargas granted that motion in part and ordered the government to file a status report by today.

As of the end of last week, appointments were still paused. State told the Associated Press the pause was expected to be temporary and not to extend beyond early to mid-September. We have heard that kind of assurance before, from the same building, about the March 31 camp deadline that came and went.

Why it matters Afghans remain barred by the separate 39-country proclamation, which this ruling did not touch, so the effect here falls on family reunification. These are approved I-130 petitions filed by American citizens and lawful permanent residents for Afghan spouses, parents, and children. Those families won a court ruling and got a global pause instead.

Track litigation

TWENTY-TWO DAYS

September 30, 2026 is a Wednesday, and may just be one of the most important Wednesdays of the year. Camp As Sayliyah is scheduled to close. The fiscal year ends. And the President is required to have issued the fiscal year 2027 Presidential Determination on refugee admissions before October 1.

Inside the camp, per our own count as of August 31, there are 1,039 Afghan allies and family members. Of those, 752 are women and children. Nineteen are pregnant. Roughly 150 are the immediate family of American service members and recently separated veterans. Every one of them was vetted before the United States government put them on a plane to Qatar. There is still no published destination plan. Transparency and safety are what is owed to the men, women, and children who live there with no clear answers about the future many of them were promised.

Last year’s refugee admissions ceiling was 7,500, the lowest in the history of the program. In May 2026 the administration raised it to 17,500, with every additional slot allocated to white South Africans. The administration is poised to allocate all or nearly all to the same population this year. Congressional consultations start September 23rd and we all need to engage to make sure Afghans are added into the FY2027 determination. To do that, we all need to raise our voices.

Why it matters None of these three deadlines requires new legislation, new money, or a new policy. Each requires a person to sign something. If September 30 arrives with the camp closing, no destination plan, and no determination that includes Afghans, that will not be a system failure. It will be a set of decisions made by a small number of named people, and we will name them.

THE NUMBERS THAT SHOULD LAND TODAY

Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the State Department to report, one week after each month ends, how many Chief of Mission cases it processed. June’s report arrived July 7, July’s on August 7. August’s is due now, and as of last night it had not hit the docket.

Here is the context for that number. The court set escalating monthly benchmarks in May, rising from 1,000 cases in June to 4,000 in October. State processed 916 in June, then 811 in July, fewer than the month before, in the month a federal judge ordered the figure to go up. More than 13,000 class member cases are already past the 120-day deadline the government’s own plan sets. We laid out how this pipeline was built and how it was shut off in The Unfinished Mission.

We are not going to render a verdict on a number we have not seen. Next Monday we will publish the August figure and the full trend line, whatever it says. Two other filings land alongside it. Judge Vargas’s status report in the visa case is due today, and the government’s opening brief in Dorcas International Institute v. USCIS, its appeal of the ruling that struck down USCIS benefit freezes, is due in the First Circuit on Thursday.

Why it matters Every one of these deadlines exists because a court had to compel this government to do something it would not do on its own. That is the actual state of play, and it is worth saying plainly. Watch what gets filed this week. Watch just as closely what does not.

USCIS CHANGED THE FORMS. THERE’S NO GRACE PERIOD.

The Affidavit of Support forms, I-864, I-864A, and I-864EZ, changed on August 31. Form I-765 and Form I-539 change on September 15. Form I-485 changes on September 18. None of them carry a grace period. File on the wrong edition and it comes back rejected, which for anyone with a filing deadline can be the whole case. One more thing worth knowing. The new I-864 lets USCIS pull a sponsor’s credit report directly from the bureaus, so sponsors with a credit freeze may need to lift it.

Why it matters A rejected filing is not a delay, it is a lost date. When an agency changes four forms in three weeks with no grace period and no outreach, the burden falls hardest on people filing without a lawyer, which describes most of the community we serve.

A FOURTH REPUBLICAN ON THE TPS ACT

Rep. Morgan Luttrell of Texas, a former Navy SEAL, signed on to the Afghanistan TPS Act of 2026. H.R. 9899, led by Rep. Jason Crow, now carries nine cosponsors. Four are Republicans, Reps. Salazar, Bacon, Wilson, and now Luttrell, and Rep. Kevin Kiley of California is listed as an independent. In the Senate, S. 5308, led by Sen. Chris Coons, has three cosponsors, including Sens. Murkowski and Cassidy. Neither bill has moved out of Judiciary and won’t unless we all ensure Congress views this as a priority.

Since we opened the campaign, 1,786 of you have contacted Congress about this bill, from 49 states and the District of Columbia. North Dakota is the only state that has not sent one yet. California leads with 231, then Virginia with 184 and New York with 132. Texas, North Carolina, and Florida all sit in the top ten, which tells you something about who is asking.

Why it matters 73% percent of Americans support letting Afghan mission partners remain here while their cases are processed. The bill is bipartisan. It has 1,786 constituent messages behind it from nearly every state in the country. It has not moved out of Judiciary since July. So what is Congress waiting for? Ask them at afghanevac.org/tps.

Contact Congress

SPRINGFIELD

Pierre Damas Bel was 20, a Wright State freshman studying neuroscience, a Marine Corps JROTC cadet and varsity soccer player who graduated from Springfield City Schools in May. His Temporary Protected Status expired in late July, and ICE fitted him with an ankle monitor, as it did to hundreds of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. He wrote online that he was “walking through the streets with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation.” He died on August 31. Haitian leaders there are now demanding an end to the monitors.

Why it matters Afghan allies are not the only people whose families, futures, and dignity have been torn apart by policy decisions. The same enforcement machinery that put a GPS monitor on Pierre Damas Bel’s leg is being used against communities across the country, including Afghans. Different histories, same human cost. El Salvador’s TPS ends tomorrow for more than 200,000 people who have held it for 25 years. Sudan and Ukraine follow on October 19.

INTERNATIONAL: THE P-1 AND P-2 FAMILIES IN PAKISTAN

All week, Afghan families in the P-1 and P-2 refugee referral categories wrote to us from Pakistan with the same disciplined ask, repeated almost word for word by dozens of accounts. Restart the cases. They are right to be impatient. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has been suspended since January 20, 2025, which means people the United States government itself referred, journalists, human rights workers, and others targeted for their association with America, have now been waiting four years.

Their situation on the ground is getting harder on a separate track. UNHCR reports that more than 307,000 Afghans returned from Pakistan between January and July of this year, and roughly 1.6 million remain. Families in the U.S. pipeline are losing lawful status in Pakistan, and some have been detained while holding valid Pakistani documents. That is a Pakistani enforcement problem rather than a U.S. refugee-processing problem, and it is what makes the American delay dangerous.

Why it matters The ask is straightforward. Restart refugee admissions for people who have already been waiting in the U.S. pipeline, including P-1 and P-2 families. When you call Congress this week, say P-1 and P-2 out loud.

BATTLE BUDDIES: SAN ANTONIO

Chad is an Army veteran who deployed to Iraq twice as a human intelligence interrogator and now pastors Arsenal Church in San Antonio. This week he accompanied an Afghan interpreter for U.S. and coalition forces to immigration court. The man had followed every step the government asked of him and was in removal proceedings anyway, because he is still waiting on durable status the government stopped granting.

“Having a buddy that can navigate that was helpful,” Chad said, “since I don’t have the same stakes to lose, and can be more upfront in asking court staff questions.” On why he goes, he was blunter. “We have people coming over with promises of safety and security, promises that got pulled from them. This should piss all of us off. They put their lives on the line for us. I need to see that they are being fought for.”

The no-detention record where a Battle Buddy is present still stands.

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NEEDHAM IS LIVE

We launched NEEDHAM, the News and Evidence Engine Documenting Historical AfghanEvac Media. It is a free research tool that searches the full text of every AfghanEvac publication, which means reporters, congressional staff, and advocates can now find what we said, when we said it, and what happened next.

Try NEEDHAM today

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The courts and the calendar

• US immigration judges told to slash time given to people awaiting visas or green cards before being deported -- The Guardian

• Immigration judges face tighter limits on case delays -- Elite

Enforcement at scale

• ICE arrested 50,000 people in August, continuing record pace -- NBC News

• ICE’s August Arrests Break Record for Number of Illegal Aliens Arrested -- U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Springfield

• Remembering Pierre Damas Bel, an Ohio college student with great promise -- NPR

• Pierre Damas Bel died in an apparent suicide. His family says he felt ‘humiliated’ by his ICE ankle monitor -- CNN

• Trump Took His Status. ICE Took His Dignity. He Took His Life. -- The Bulwark

• Springfield advocates demand end to ankle monitors after Haitian student’s suicide -- Journal-News

Five years on

• Five years after Kabul’s fall, two Prince William Afghans recall their frantic escape, and the ensuing limbo -- InsideNoVa

• Five Years After the Fall of Kabul -- Connection Newspapers

• Los afganos que Estados Unidos ha dejado atrás -- RTVE

Third-country removals, still developing

• ICE deports Afghans and others to Africa, expanding “third country” deportations -- CBS News

• Relative of Afghans who aided US military deported to Africa -- Al Jazeera

Pakistan

• Over 300,000 Afghans return from Pakistan this year amid repatriation drive, UNHCR -- Arab News Pakistan

One correction worth making An aggregator recirculated a June 2025 Military Times story this weekend under the headline “Trump issues travel ban, bars Afghans from entry into US,” and it moved through inboxes as if it were new. It is fifteen months old. No new travel ban proclamation was signed this month. The operative instrument is still Proclamation 10998, effective January 1, 2026. The real news is quieter and worse, and it is in the sections above.

They can call these people unvetted. They cannot make it true.

The screening happened, the American government paid for it, and its own inspectors wrote it down.

A definition changed quietly only works if nobody checks it, and checking is the whole job now.

Read the letter.

Watch the four minutes.

Send both to the people who represent you.

And if you can get to a courtroom this month, get to a courtroom. Show up. Bring a buddy.

We are not going anywhere.

On Friday, a deportation plane left Dallas for the Central African Republic. Among those aboard was a young Afghan whom a U.S. immigration judge had protected from return to Afghanistan. Thirty days from today, Camp As Sayliyah is scheduled to close with more than a thousand Afghans still inside and no announced destination plan.

This week, three things matter most. Start there, then read on.

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THREE THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK

1. Share the polling, tag us, and use the hashtag. Post afghanevac.org/polling wherever you are online, tag @AfghanEvac, and use #StillWithUS. The most useful thing you can do this week is make it impossible for any office in Washington to keep calling this politically risky. Copy and paste if it helps:

Eighty-four percent of Americans say we should keep our promise to the Afghans who served alongside our troops. Support jumps twenty points once people simply learn who they are. New bipartisan polling from @AfghanEvac and HIAS. #StillWithUS afghanevac.org/polling

2. Contact Congress before September 30, and bring the numbers with you. Demand resumed processing and a safe, public destination plan for Camp As Sayliyah, and a fiscal year 2027 refugee admissions determination that includes Afghans. Send your representative and both senators the polling, then ask what they intend to do with a bipartisan mandate this clear. Facts and a script at afghanevac.org/cas. Take action at action.afghanevac.org.

3. Push the Afghanistan TPS Act. Ask your representative to cosponsor H.R. 9899 and your senators to cosponsor S. 5308. The House bill still needs more cosponsors. Tools at afghanevac.org/tps.

THEY SENT HIM TO A COUNTRY AT WAR

On Friday, a deportation plane left the Dallas area for the Central African Republic, with stops in Senegal and Sierra Leone. Roughly seventy people were aboard. CBS News identified at least twelve Afghans on the flight; The New York Times reported roughly twenty. There were Iranians, Nepalis, and Nicaraguans as well. None were sent to their own countries.

One of them is a twenty-four-year-old identified publicly only as Khalil, at his attorney’s request, because his full name could get him killed. An immigration judge granted him withholding of removal last year after finding that he faced a credible risk of persecution in Afghanistan. His father, his brother, and his sister worked alongside American forces. Another brother, a pilot trained by the United States, was killed fighting the Taliban in 2020. After Kabul fell, the Taliban raided the family’s house looking for them.

Colonel Zachary Schmidt, an active-duty Marine who supervised Khalil’s brother during the war, testified at his hearing. “It is my belief that if Khalil gets sent back to Afghanistan, that he will be killed,” he told CBS News. His attorney, Alma David, put the pattern plainly: “The goal is to obliterate the global refugee protection system, and his case should serve as a warning.”

The Central African Republic is in the middle of a civil war and has been for decades, and it sits on the State Department's own list of countries Americans are told not to visit. CBS News reports that over the course of ten days, three ICE flights carried more than a hundred people to eight African countries. No publicly disclosed framework guarantees the people sent to the Central African Republic legal status, work authorization, or continuing legal support.

Why it matters When an administration cannot return a person to Afghanistan because a judge found he would face persecution, and instead sends him to a third country in active conflict, the order is honored on paper and emptied in practice. That is not ordinary enforcement. It is a circumvention of the protection a court granted, and it runs against the principle of non-refoulement, the rule that a state does not deliver people into danger, whether directly or by routing them through somewhere else. It is becoming part of the operating model.

Read it and send it on. The New York Times broke the story on Friday with AfghanEvac as a named source, and that is a gift link, so it opens for everyone.

THIRTY DAYS TO SEPTEMBER 30

Friday’s flight is the reason the next thirty days matter so much. Three deadlines land on the same Wednesday. Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar is scheduled to close, with more than a thousand Afghans still inside and no announced destination for them. The fiscal year 2027 Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions is statutorily due. And the fiscal year ends, taking the appropriations and visa allocation posture with it.

The camp population is not abstract. Roughly 150 of the people inside are the immediate family of American service members and veterans. More than four hundred are children who have not been in a classroom in years. The people inside have undergone extensive vetting. Many have completed interviews, and the consular cohort includes people with Chief of Mission approval. What is missing is a policy decision to resume and finish processing, and it is one this administration has repeatedly refused to make.

We have made this ask before. Thirty-five members of Congress led by Representative Scott Peters and Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote to Secretaries Rubio, Mullin, and Hegseth on August 7. Eighty-three House members led by Representatives Jason Crow and Don Bacon wrote in June. Twenty-nine senators wrote in the spring opposing the third-country transfer scheme. More than a thousand people signed our open letter, hand-delivered to fifty offices. There is no version of this where the government can claim it did not know.

What we want is narrow and achievable. Restart processing for camp residents whose cases are ready. Publish a destination plan before the closure date rather than after it. Do not let a closure date become a transfer deadline. And do not move a single family to a third country the State Department itself tells Americans not to visit. If the camp closes on September 30 with no plan, that will not be a logistical failure. It will be a decision, made by named people, and we will name them.

Read our CAS Explainer

Our honest read is that September 30 will slip. The Department has no published destination plan, and it has been here before. Its self-imposed March 31 closure deadline passed without an announcement, an accounting, or a single family moved. A deadline with no plan behind it is not a deadline, it is a date on a slide. We expect an extension, and we would rather say so plainly than let a thousand people spend the month believing they are about to be put on a plane to nowhere.

That is not reassurance. An extension is not a solution. It is more months in a camp for four hundred children who have not been in a classroom in years, and it hands the Department more time it has not used well so far.

We are also hearing that Rwanda has moved to the top of the Department’s third-country list. We have not confirmed it, nobody has announced it, and we are working to pin it down. We are saying it out loud anyway, because the Democratic Republic of the Congo plan taught us that these arrangements move fastest when nobody outside the building knows they exist.

WHAT THE COUNTRY ACTUALLY WANTS

On Thursday we released, in partnership with HIAS, a national bipartisan poll conducted by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic firm, and The Tarrance Group, a Republican firm, among 1,000 likely 2026 voters fielded July 23 to 30. We commissioned it because five years of this fight have run on an assumption nobody had bothered to test, which is that the American public moved on. That assumption is wrong.

• 84 percent say the United States should keep its commitment to the Afghans who worked alongside American troops, and to their families.

• 52 to 72 percent. Support for admitting Afghan allies jumps twenty points once voters simply learn who these people are, and more than doubles among Republicans, landing at 54 percent.

• 80 percent say we can protect national security and honor our commitments at the same time.

• 78 percent support reuniting the families of American citizens and service members.

• 76 percent support restoring protections for people who were already approved.

• 72 percent support a permanent program for wartime allies rather than another improvised fix after the next withdrawal.

• 70 percent want protection extended to everyone who risked their lives alongside Americans, not only the narrower group the current statute happens to cover.

• 63 percent oppose deporting or transferring Afghans to third countries.

• 83 percent of voters agree that no American in uniform should have to leave family behind; 73 percent of military households strongly agree.

Two findings deserve far more attention than they have gotten. Seventy-two percent support a permanent wartime allies program rather than another improvised response after the next withdrawal, and 70 percent want protection extended beyond the narrow group covered by the current Special Immigrant Visa statute. The SIV was built around a documented employment relationship with the United States. It was never built for the local staff two layers down a subcontract, or the drivers and fixers, or the women who kept clinics and schools open because Americans asked them to. The public is ahead of the law.

None of that came from loose question wording. We built the instrument to test the recommendations in The Unfinished Mission, because we wanted to know whether the fixes we are proposing could hold politically before asking any member of Congress to carry them. They can. We are working with congressional offices right now on long-term, conflict-agnostic mission partner legislation, a standing framework that applies to whoever stands with Americans in the next place we go.

Why it matters Every ask in this newsletter has been treated in Washington as politically costly. It is not. It is politically popular, in both parties, and it is now documented by a bipartisan pollster pairing. If a congressional office tells you there is no appetite for this, they are describing the building, not the country.

Learn more

THE COMPLIANCE NUMBERS ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY

The court in Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio ordered the State Department to complete 1,000 Chief of Mission adjudications in June, 2,000 in July, and 3,000 in August. State reported 916 in June and only 811 in July. In Thursday’s joint status report, plaintiffs asked for a concrete staffing plan, clearer reporting broken out by case type, an explanation of the late-June systems outage, and immediate steps to catch up.

Why it matters The trend line is not a plateau. It is a decline. The August filing lands in early September, and the number will tell us plainly whether this administration intends to accelerate processing or keep crippling it.

69 HOUSE MEMBERS CHALLENGE THE ASYLUM INTERVIEW RULE

Representatives Morgan McGarvey and Pramila Jayapal led sixty-nine House members in a letter urging U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to rescind the interim final rule, effective July 28, that lets asylum officers refer affirmative asylum cases straight to immigration court without an interview. The government’s own estimate is that up to 31 percent of roughly 1.4 million pending affirmative asylum cases could be affected. Litigation is already moving in Immigration Equality v. Mullin, filed August 19.

Why it matters The affirmative asylum interview is the first dedicated opportunity for an applicant to present the claim directly to a decision-maker. Eliminating it may move cases off USCIS’s docket, but it does not resolve them. It shifts them to immigration court, where applicants are far more likely to be unrepresented.

IN THE COURTS

The First Circuit appeal in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS is moving, with appellee appearances entered August 25 and the government’s opening brief due September 10. Two of the four vacated USCIS policies remain vacated after the August 14 panel ruling. In CLINIC v. Rubio, the State Department’s temporary immigrant visa appointment rescheduling was described as running through August 31, so the question this week is whether appointments actually resume on September 1. Our explainer on that ruling and its limits stays at afghanevac.org/clinic.

Why it matters September will test whether agencies follow through on what they told the courts they would do.

INSIDE THE SECRET SCHOOLS

On Friday the New York Times published a report from inside Afghanistan’s underground schools for girls, the classrooms that exist only because the Taliban has barred girls from education past the sixth grade. It is worth your ten minutes, and it is a gift link, so you can send it to anyone. UN Women’s five-year assessment, published this month, describes the exclusion of Afghan women and girls from education, work, movement, and public life as normalized rather than contested, while funding for the programs that serve them collapses.

Why it matters Every argument for winding down the pipeline rests on an unstated assumption that conditions inside Afghanistan are tolerable enough to leave people there. They are not. Join our women and girls list at afghanevac.org/women-and-girls.

INTERNATIONAL

A Pakistani court questioned the legal basis of a visa extension plea brought by eighty-seven Afghan students, with a reported remark from the bench that “we are at war with Afghans.” Separately, UN-Habitat reported that more than six million Afghan migrants have returned to Afghanistan over three years, while shelter assistance is funded at roughly seven million dollars against a stated need of a hundred and sixty million. Turkey, for example, detained thirty-six Afghan migrants and one Iranian attempting to reach Greece.

Why it matters American processing does not happen in a vacuum. Every month it remains frozen or severely constrained, the third countries our allies are waiting in grow more hostile and less able to hold them, and the pressure to return to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan gets harder to resist.

THE LOWELL TOWN HALL

We spent the fifth anniversary of the last flight out of Kabul in a room in Lowell, Massachusetts. More than eighty people came.

Two subjects dominated that room, and neither one was the anniversary. The first was family reunification. People trying to get a spouse, a parent, or a child out, finding every door either closed or silent, and asking what is left. The second was the benefits caught in the USCIS pause, the work permits, green cards, and adjustments that stopped moving and took people’s ability to work, travel, and plan with them.

That is what five years looks like from the inside. Not a retrospective, but specific unanswered questions from people who have waited far too long. Nobody in that room needed to be told what happened in 2021. They needed to know what happens to a pending I-730 in 2026.

Our thanks to Jeff and Caroline from the International Institute of New England, for hosting us and for running the kind of operation that makes an unfamiliar room feel safe to speak in. Thank you as well to Bahara at AAPI and to John Moses of the Mass Afghan Alliance, who helped pack the room. That work is nearly invisible and nearly the whole reason anyone walks through the door. These events belong to the local organizations that build the trust long before we show up.

If your community wants a town hall, request one at afghanevac.org/town-hall.

THE LETTERS FROM PAKISTAN

Over the weekend our inbox filled with near-identical messages from Priority 1 and Priority 2 applicants stranded in Pakistan, many of them addressed to several organizations at once, all asking for action before September 1. They are coordinated, and that is not a criticism. It is what people do when the ordinary channels have stopped answering.

We are reading every one. We cannot promise casework, and we will not pretend the September 1 date carries a decision behind it. What we can promise is that these letters go where letters go, which is to Congress, into the record, and into the next thing we publish.

FIVE YEARS, AND A SPECIAL EDITION

Yesterday’s special edition put the year’s work on the record, with a full accounting of what this coalition produced between January and August, our new polling, and notes written directly to Afghan allies and the diaspora, to volunteers and advocates, and to the American public.

Wednesday’s Abbey Gate anniversary brought proclamations and official statements. We would trade every proclamation for one flight manifest.

Read the special edition

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The poll

• Most Americans Support Visa Protections for Afghan Allies, Poll Finds -- Politico Pro

• Poll Shows 72% of Americans Support Admitting Afghan Allies -- KabulNow

• Majority Of US Voters Back Afghan Allies’ Resettlement, Shows New Poll -- Afghanistan International

• Most Americans Support Protecting Afghan Allies Who Assisted US Military, Poll Finds -- Khaama Press

Third-country deportations

• U.S. Deports Afghans, Including Relatives of Wartime Allies, to Central African Republic -- The New York Times (gift link)

• ICE deports Afghans and others to Africa, expanding “third country” deportations -- CBS News

• US deports relative of Afghans who aided military to Africa -- Al Jazeera

• Trump administration deports relative of Afghans who helped US military to Central African Republic -- NPR

• US deports 12 Afghans to Central African Republic -- Pajhwok Afghan News

• US deports relative of Afghans who helped US military to Africa -- Ariana News

Women and girls

• Inside Afghanistan’s Secret Schools for Girls -- The New York Times (gift link)

Five years on

• 5 years after withdrawal, a grave picture for Afghans inside and outside the US — The Hill

• Why the United States Can’t Quit Its Wars -- The New York Times (gift link)

International

• ‘We Are at War with Afghans’: Pakistan Court Questions Visa Plea by 87 Students -- Khaama Press

• More Than 6 Million Afghan Migrants Have Returned Home in Three Years, UN-Habitat Says -- Khaama Press

• Turkey Detains 36 Afghan Migrants and One Iranian En Route to Greece -- Khaama Press

Congress

• Reps. McGarvey, Jayapal Demand Trump Administration Reverse Rule to Fast-Track ICE Detention and Deportation Proceedings for Asylum Seekers -- Office of Rep. Morgan McGarvey

Khalil won protection in court. A federal immigration judge heard the evidence, heard an active-duty Marine colonel testify that this young man would be killed, and ruled in his favor. On Friday he was put on a plane anyway. Keep that in mind for the next thirty days, because it is the clearest answer available to anyone who tells you the system is working as designed. It is working exactly as designed. The design is the problem.

September will not be gentle. A camp is scheduled to close, a refugee ceiling gets set, a fiscal year ends, and a court finds out whether an agency meant what it told a judge. Every one of those outcomes will be decided by a small number of people who could pick up a pen this week and probably will not unless someone makes them. That is not a reason to look away. It is the entire reason to call, because the polling we released on Thursday settles the question this fight has been arguing with itself about for five years. The country is not the obstacle. The country is with us.

Support this work at afghanevac.org/donate. Take action at action.afghanevac.org. Find resources at afghanevac.org/resources.

So we are staying there this week.

August is hard from start to finish. And for those who do the work, this coming Wednesday is a hard date to sit with.

There is real news this morning, including a federal court ruling that far too many people are misreading. We are going to explain it.

Two urgent things. Then Wednesday. Then the people.

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE, TWO THINGS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

One. A federal judge struck down the visa ban on Friday, and it does not open the door. On August 21, Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the Southern District of New York vacated the State Department policy that suspended immigrant visa processing for nationals of 75 countries, including Afghanistan.

That is a real win. We will take it.

It is not the win we need, and it does not reopen the door.

A separate order, the entry proclamation signed on December 16, 2025, still bars Afghans from entering the United States. That proclamation was not before the court. If your visa was refused under section 212(f), the authority behind the entry ban, Friday’s ruling does not fix your case.

Please do not book travel, quit a job, or give up a lease on the strength of a headline. Read afghanevac.org/clinic, watch the explainer video on our Facebook page, and talk to a licensed immigration attorney about your specific case.

Two. If you are in the United States of America and got a letter withdrawing your Chief of Mission approval, you have 120 days to respond, and you should not answer it alone. Afghan allies who came to the United States on Special Immigrant Visas and now hold green cards are receiving emails from the National Visa Center withdrawing the Chief of Mission approval that made their visas possible.

This is not routine paperwork.

It can lead to a Notice of Intent to Revoke and, from there, removal proceedings. The clock begins on the date of the email.

Include a copy of your green card or other proof that you are in the United States, because without it we cannot move your case forward. A member of our staff will help route you to a lawyer.

Many lawyers are working on cases just like yours. It may take some time to match an attorney with your case, and we cannot guarantee availability. We are here as a resource to do the best we can with the resources available, with partners we can stand behind and alongside to help where they can.

Submit your case now

This is what is happening now, but it isn’t everything. Keep reading.

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday, August 26, 2026, marks five years to the day since the attack at Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021.

Say their names.

Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover. Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo. Sgt. Nicole Gee. Cpl. Hunter Lopez. Cpl. Daegan William-Tyeler Page. Cpl. Humberto Sanchez. Lance Cpl. David Lee Espinoza. Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz. Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum. Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola. Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui. Hospitalman Maxton Soviak. Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss.

Eleven Marines. One sailor. One soldier.

Most of them were barely into their twenties. They stood in a crowd, in the heat, pulling strangers through a gate, and they did not stop.

At least 170 Afghans died in that same crowd. Mothers holding paperwork. Fathers who had gotten their families that far and no farther. Children.

Their names are not read aloud at ceremonies in this country. They should be. We remember them in the same breath.

Abbey Gate is not the entire story.

More than 2,400 American service members died in Afghanistan across twenty years, alongside troops from dozens of allied nations and tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers, police officers, and civilians who fought and fell on our side of that war.

Interpreters walked point. Drivers took the road first. Entire families were lost.

Here is what that sacrifice bought.

Thousands of Americans came home because Afghans stood between them and the people trying to kill them. Thousands of Afghans are alive in our communities because Americans held a gate and would not move.

That exchange is the moral foundation of this work.

America made a promise. It was not aspirational. It was a debt.

To the Gold Star families, five years into carrying this publicly, on a schedule you did not choose, in front of people who were not there: We see you.

To the Afghans who were in that crowd and survived: We see you, too.

There is a memorial card at the bottom of this post for anyone who wants something to share on Wednesday.

THE PEOPLE WHO SHOWED UP THIS WEEK

While all of that was happening, ordinary people kept getting in cars and going to appointments with strangers. Battle Buddies continued its record of no detentions for Afghan allies, with accompaniments across the country.

In Texas, an Afghan family who recently lost their father had a biometrics appointment at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They were met there by their Battle Buddy, Steve, a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan as part of a military training team in Kabul. Six kids in that family. Steve came with snacks. He stayed with them the whole way through.

My kid is about the same age as their oldest daughter, and I was able to connect with her and the younger kids about their common experiences.

In the DC area, Monica and Leisel sat in on the asylum hearing of an Afghan ally who had served in the Afghan National Police, who carries wounds from a Taliban attack, and who has built a good life here since. Their presence was a message to him, and it was also a message to the immigration judge. He was granted asylum. Monica’s note afterward was six words longer than it needed to be, in the best way, calling him “a wonderful addition to United States and [I’m] so thankful for the great outcome.”

On Tuesday we go to Philadelphia to stand with someone who served in the Afghan National Mine Removal Group (NMRG), his military’s premier unit for route clearance, mine reduction, and counter-IED work, and he was in firefights alongside American forces. He and his family got onto one of the flights out of Kabul airport five years ago almost to the day. His two youngest were born here. Wednesday’s anniversary and his green card interview are separated by about eighteen hours.

And then there was a Battle Buddy in Eugene. She read a story in the Eugene Weekly this week about an Afghan family who had rebuilt their business in Oregon, and she did not forward it to anyone or post about it. She found the woman in the story, reached out to contribute to her circle of Afghan women in need, and asked whether the family needed a hand with anything. Her email to us ended with one line.

I’m proud to be a Battle Buddy!

That is the whole model. Somebody reads something, and instead of feeling bad about it, they go find the person and ask what they need. If you want to be that person, the training is about forty minutes.

Become a Battle Buddy today

THE VOICES OF OUR ALLIES

Last week we said we would start sharing the letters that fill our inbox every week, always without names or anything that could identify anyone. Here is this week’s, and there is a pattern in it.

They organized.

Starting last Sunday and continuing all week, Afghan Priority 1 and Priority 2 families stranded in Pakistan wrote to us collectively. Dozens of letters, many of them word for word identical, sent separately by people who coordinated across cities and camps so that the same request would land the same way. Years of waiting. Cases that stopped moving. Expired visas, expired documents, children who cannot go to school, and a deportation regime that has forced more than 213,000 Afghans back across that border since April 2025. They are not asking for sympathy. They are asking to be put in front of Congress in one voice rather than ten thousand separate emails.

We do not want our voices to stop at an office desk.

And they’re asking for us to meet with President Trump. We will ask for the meeting but we don’t have high hopes he will take us up on it.

An Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicant in Peshawar, four years into waiting for an interview that has never been scheduled, wrote to ask a question we cannot answer.

I am requesting an update regarding my interview scheduling.

A young Afghan woman still inside the country wrote about fearing for her safety, about trying to keep studying under a government that has closed the doors to her, and about wanting a future she can use to help other people. She had clearly read everything we have published about how narrow the pathways are right now. She wrote this anyway.

I am not asking for preferential treatment; I am simply trying to understand whether there is any safe and realistic pathway available to me.

Read that line twice. Then consider that the honest answer, this week, in the fifth year, is almost none. That is not a natural condition. It is the result of decisions, made by people with names, and it can be reversed by those same people.

We are not going to dress any of this up.

WHERE THINGS STAND

• The visa ruling, in full. CLINIC v. Rubio, No. 1:26-cv-00858 (S.D.N.Y.), decided August 21. Judge Vargas found the 75-country suspension exceeded the Secretary of State’s authority and violated the Immigration and Nationality Act’s ban on nationality discrimination in issuing immigrant visas. “In many ways, this is not a challenging case,” she wrote. Case-by-case adjudication is restored and denials resting on the pause alone are set aside. The entry proclamation is untouched, carries no broad categorical exemption for Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders, and is the wall that actually keeps our allies out. We expect an appeal and a stay request. There are three ways the proclamation ends. Congress legislates around it, a court finds it unlawful, or the President rescinds it with a signature this afternoon at no cost to anyone. Our breakdown is at afghanevac.org/clinic.

• We are about to enter the last month before Camp As Sayliyah’s publicly stated closure date. What happens after September 30, no one has said. More than a thousand Afghans are still there, overwhelmingly women and children, roughly 150 of them the immediate family of American service members and veterans, with hundreds more military family members caught elsewhere in the same freeze. As of this week nobody inside has been told what happens on October 1. Army Times and Military Times ran it Thursday. On August 7, thirty-five members of Congress led by Rep. Scott Peters and Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote to Secretaries Rubio, Mullin, and Hegseth demanding these vetted allies be processed first. Read the letter. Their interviews are done. Their Chief of Mission approvals are in hand. What is missing is a decision.

• A lawsuit over the rule that takes away the asylum interview. On Wednesday, August 19, the National Immigrant Justice Center, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, and Human Rights First sued in federal court in Washington over a USCIS interim final rule that took effect July 28. The rule lets asylum officers refer cases straight to immigration court without ever conducting an affirmative asylum interview, deciding on the written application alone. By the government’s own estimate, up to 31 percent of the 1.4 million pending affirmative asylum cases could be affected. The case is Immigration Equality v. Mullin, brought on behalf of Immigration Equality, Oasis Legal Services, HIAS, and the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project. Read the plaintiffs’ statement. Afghans with pending affirmative asylum claims are squarely inside this. The interview is where a person gets to explain, in their own words and to a human being, why they cannot go home. Taking it away turns a protection process into a paperwork screen.

• The August 18 press conference made news. With Rep. Don Bacon, Sharif Aly of the International Refugee Assistance Project, Laila Ayub of Project ANAR, Danilo Zak of Church World Service, and Sean Jamshidi, a medically retired Marine gunnery sergeant whose brother is inside that camp. Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general, put it plainly. “Most Americans want a decent, I would call it a Christian policy here, and that’s not what we’re getting.” He and Rep. Julie Johnson signaled a discharge petition on the Afghanistan Temporary Protected Status Act is coming soon. It takes 218 signatures and it is the only tool that works when leadership will not schedule a bill.

• We went to the Truman Project to explain how Enduring Welcome was built and how it was taken apart. Jessica Bradley Rushing, former #AfghanEvac Chief of Staff, who ran communications and engagement at the State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts before joining us, moderated a discussion with two members of our Executive Advisory Council, Chris Purdy, Founder and CEO of The Chamberlain Network, and Camille Mackler, former Executive Director of Immigrant ARC and me. It was not a debate about whether the promise was made. Thank you to the Truman Project for having us come talk about what we have lived through. We hope we honored the spirit of everyone who built that program and everyone still waiting on it. We want to do more of these, so if your organization is hosting something, send it our way.

• Three quiet changes that can cost someone their case. As of August 13, the Board of Immigration Appeals held that leaving the country on advance parole can trigger the three- and ten-year unlawful presence bars, which it generally did not before. That is a court decision, not an agency memo, which makes it harder to undo. As of August 21, USCIS made it substantially harder to reschedule an affirmative asylum interview or biometrics appointment, stopped issuing the Failure to Appear warning notice, and will now consider terminating a parolee’s status over a missed appointment, with evidence due fourteen calendar days ahead. And on September 18 the new public charge rule takes effect for green card applications, including benefits you applied for and never received. It does not apply to refugees and asylees adjusting status. Church World Service and USAHello track all of it in their weekly State of Play, translated into nine languages including Dari.

• Five years on, the UN says Afghan women have been erased from public life. UN Women’s assessment is that the exclusion of women and girls from education, work, movement, and public space has been normalized rather than contested, while funding for women-serving programs collapses. Every month the pipeline stays frozen is another month an Afghan woman with a pending case cannot work, cannot study, and cannot leave.

• A case at the Supreme Court worth watching. The Court has asked for a response in the petition brought by the Afghan couple challenging the Virginia adoption order that placed their orphaned relative with another family, on Fourteenth Amendment due process grounds. A request for a response is not a grant of review, but it means somebody is reading. Counsel put the response deadline at September 16. The precedent reaches well past one family.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Read and share the ruling explainer at afghanevac.org/clinic. The most useful thing you can do this week is stop a family from making an irreversible decision on a misread headline.

• Ask your representative and both senators to cosponsor the Afghanistan Temporary Protected Status Act, H.R. 9899 and S. 5308, at afghanevac.org/tps. If they are already on, ask them to sign the discharge petition when it drops.

• Come to the Afghan Community Town Hall in Lowell, Massachusetts, on August 30 at 11:00 a.m. Sign up today at afghanevac.org/bos-town-hall.

• Mark Wednesday. Post a name, or all thirteen, or the Afghans who died in that crowd. The card at the bottom of this post is yours to use.

• Get ready for September. The FY27 presidential determination on refugee admissions lands next month and Camp As Sayliyah closes September 30. Both need volume on short notice.

• Donate at afghanevac.org/donate. Battle Buddies runs on it. So do the explainers that keep families from making bad decisions in weeks like this one.

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The visa ruling

• Federal judge strikes down Trump visa ban targeting 75 countries -- NPR

• Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s visa pauses for 75 countries -- The Hill

• Federal judge vacates Trump policy that suspended processing of immigration visas from 75 countries -- PBS NewsHour

• Trump administration’s 75-country visa ban was illegal, judge rules -- KPBS

• US judge strikes down Trump visa suspension for 75 countries, including Afghanistan -- Khaama Press

• US judge strikes down Trump visa suspension for 75 countries, including Afghanistan -- Ariana News

Asylum and due process

• Immigrant rights groups sue to protect due process for asylum seekers -- National Immigrant Justice Center

• Lawsuit challenges new rule that could send more asylum seekers straight to immigration court -- KJZZ

Camp As Sayliyah

• Hundreds of US military family members trapped at camp facing closure, group says -- Army Times

Afghans building lives here

• The Afghan refugee who wants to go to space -- The World from PRX

• A business in Kabul, a business in Eugene -- Eugene Weekly

From the five-year mark, still worth putting in front of people

• The Ongoing Betrayal of Our Afghan Allies -- The New Republic

• Five years after Taliban takeover, Afghan women ‘erased from public life’ -- UN News

• Five years after the Taliban takeover: the normalization of the exclusion of women and girls in Afghanistan -- UN Women

• From shelter to repatriation: Pakistan’s policy shift toward Afghan refugees -- The Friday Times

Our reports

• The Allied Ledger -- #AfghanEvac and Local Staff International

• The Unfinished Mission -- #AfghanEvac

One more week of this. August 26 is Wednesday and August 30 is the last flight out, and then it is September and the calendar lets go of us for another year. If you need to sit this week out, sit it out. Free legal help, pathway information, safety guidance, and mental health and crisis support are all at afghanevac.org/resources, for you whether you are in Kabul, Doha, Islamabad, or down the street from us in San Diego.

But if you have anything left, spend it the way Steve and Monica and Leisel and one Battle Buddy in Eugene spent theirs this week, which is on one person, in one room, on one ordinary Tuesday. Five years ago thirteen Americans held a gate open at the cost of their lives so that people they had never met could get through it. Nobody is asking that of you. We are asking for a phone call, a hearing, a car ride, and a name said out loud on Wednesday.

That is how a promise gets kept. Not all at once, and not by the government that made it, but by us, one at a time, until they are all home.

We put out our five-year statement Saturday morning. It was deliberately not a policy document. We write about the government fifty weeks a year, and these two weeks do not belong to the government. It belongs to Afghans, to the people who did not survive the last five years, and to the network that has carried this work from the first night.

Then you started writing back. Not a few of you. A lot of you. And what came in was not commentary. It was testimony. About what we’ve done together and what we’ve got left to do.

So this week’s update is going to be different. The policy is still here, the court news is real and it is good, and the asks are all at the bottom where you can find them. But the top of this one belongs to you.

Read the statement

THANK YOU, SPECIFICALLY

Thank you is easy to say and almost impossible to say well, so let me try to say it in the specific, unglamorous way it deserves.

Thank you for the casework you did after your shift ended. For the calls you took at two in the morning because that is when Kabul is awake. For the affidavits, the FOIA requests, the flight manifests you chased, the congressional offices you would not stop emailing, and the families you have carried for five years without ever meeting them in person.

Thank you to the lawyers who filed for free, and kept filing after the fourth denial. To the veterans who went looking for their own interpreters and then stayed to look for everyone else’s. To the teachers, the truck drivers, the grandmothers, and the college students who learned an immigration system from scratch because nobody else was going to do it.

And thank you to the Afghan Americans in this coalition, who spent five years doing casework for strangers while their own cases sat frozen, translating for families they had never met while their own mothers were still in Kabul. There is no version of this work that happens without you, and there is no honest telling of the last five years that puts you anywhere but at the center of it.

A little girl named Ifat spent years in a transit camp in Qatar, her skin blistering from a disease that makes it tear at the lightest touch. Her parents kept her alive in that heat. A handful of stubborn women with no authority and no budget made sure the rest of us learned her name. She is safe today because of them..

That is what this network is. That is what it has been for five years.

YOUR STORIES, FROM THE FRONTLINES

One reply came in from a woman in Portland. In August 2021 an Afghan friend called her, a young man she had tutored in English years earlier in Austria, and asked whether she could find anyone who had stayed at his in-laws’ guesthouses in Kabul, anyone who might sign an affidavit. She thought it would be like tracking down people for a high school reunion. She found exactly one person willing to talk to her. Every other door closed.

The family went into hiding. She and her husband and a friend in California filed anyway, a twenty-two-inch stack of paper for humanitarian parole, because the family’s SIV paperwork had vanished and nobody believed it had ever existed. They were told, in so many words, that everybody claims that.

It took three years. Someone at the State Department eventually found the file. The family had been telling the truth the entire time. They had held an embassy appointment for the day Kabul fell.

The parents came, with their two youngest. The children over twenty-one could not. That family made the decision to split themselves across three countries and an ocean because they believed in what their youngest two might become here. They are her neighbors now.

She did not write to us to complain. She wrote to say thank you, and then a whole life came out of her while she was typing. Her own closing line was this. “I had no idea this would come out when all I wanted to do was say thank you.”

That is what this anniversary did to people. That is what five years of carrying something does.

Others were shorter and landed just as hard.

A woman wrote to say she is one of the many quiet supporters of this work, and that she knows how hard it is to keep going right now. She was not asking for anything. She wanted us to know she was out there.

Another wrote something I have been turning over ever since.

I do not know one Afghan person but I still feel in my heart that we owe them what we promised. They believed us. We have to make it right.

That is the whole argument, from someone with no personal stake in it at all. No Afghan friend, no deployment, no case she is carrying. Just a promise she watched her country make.

A reader in Ohio sent us the reply he got from his senator after asking him to cosponsor. It was a form letter about Haitian TPS. He had written about Afghans. Nobody read it, and he knew nobody read it, and he told us he plans to keep going anyway and that he will always remember this response. That is not a defeat. That is a man who has correctly identified what he is dealing with.

And a veteran wrote four sentences that cut straight through. These are challenging times, he said, and he wants to know how to fight back, because we all served our country but we also signed up to fight.

He deserves a real answer, so here it is. Fighting back does not look like fury on the internet.

It looks like a cosponsor added to a bill, a reporter who finally understands the difference between a refugee and an SIV holder because you spent forty minutes explaining it, a volunteer sitting in a courtroom so an ICE officer knows someone is watching, and a family that does not get separated because somebody read the docket and made a phone call at the right hour.

It is unglamorous, it is slow, and five years of this record says it works. The action list at the bottom is the current version of it.

FINISH THE MISSION

Wednesday, the 12th of August, was one of the biggest things we did all year. It is a privilege to be able to host a room that told the story of what this coalition really is: people from everywhere, doing their absolute most to finish what we collectively started.

The Global Alliance Update drew nearly 500 registrants from more than sixteen countries. More than half joined from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not advocates talking about allies. The allies themselves, including former military officers, aid workers, and journalists who are still in danger as they listened. Around them sat congressional staff, former senior American officials, resettlement and legal organizations, coalition-country military associations, and press from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and Czechia.

Ambassador Tim Davis, former United States Ambassador to Qatar and a Marine, opened it. “Wars do not end because politicians say they are over,” he said. “For those who participate in them, they end when we have taken care of all the work, and all the people, who fought and bled alongside us.” Senator Chris Coons sent video remarks. Ambassador John R. Bass, former United States Ambassador to Afghanistan, closed it, and what he said was about you, not about us. “You ran to the problem. You innovated, you collaborated, and you refused to take no for an answer. Five years later, the results of that determination have been remarkable, well beyond what virtually everyone thought possible.”

The panel was Johnny Mercer, the former British MP and our senior adviser, Major General Denis Thompson of the Canadian Armed Forces, retired, Dr. Beth Oppenheim of HIAS, and Emmanuel Jacob of EUROMIL, moderated by Jon Feltham of Aman Lara. Professor Sara de Jong of the University of York introduced the Guidelines for the Rights and Protection of Local Staff in International Missions.

And we released The Allied Ledger, written with Professor Sara de Jong, Jon Feltham, and Julia Aitken of Local Staff International. It is the first full accounting of how every nation that fought in Afghanistan kept or broke its promise. The finding is bleak and it is not only about us. By 2026, every coalition nation’s Afghan relocation program had closed, frozen, or been terminated. Only the United States and the United Kingdom rate even a mixed grade. Canada took more than 63,000 and then closed intake entirely. Germany moved 33,000 of 45,000 pledged and froze the rest. The report sets all of it against a century of precedent, from the Assyrian Levies in 1933 to Mali in 2023, and finds the same abandonment recurring by design, with Vietnam and the Kurds as the rare exceptions.

Watch the full event

That is why the event was called Finish The Mission. The name was not decoration. The mission was not completed in August 2021, and it does not end because a fifth anniversary came and went. There are people in Kabul, in Islamabad, and at Camp As Sayliyah whose files are open and whose vetting is finished. Finishing the mission means getting them here.

THIS ANNIVERSARY GOT LOUDER

This year feels different and more visible, because you helped make sure that this moment in time did not go unnoticed.

The coverage this week was not a courtesy. NPR’s story on Afghan allies worried about losing their green cards ran on dozens of member stations from Georgia to Utah to New Hampshire, and was picked up in translation in the Netherlands.

CBC and the Globe and Mail ran hard pieces on how the reckoning is going here compared with allied countries. Scripps News carried it on television. Op-eds from our teams ran in Fox News, and a blunter version syndicated out to the Orlando Sentinel, Las Vegas Weekly, the Santa Maria Times, the Lompoc Record, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and the DC Journal under a headline that does not leave much room for interpretation: we made a promise to the Afghans, and we are breaking it on purpose.

Five years in, most anniversaries get quieter. This one got louder. That is not luck, and it is not just us. It is five years of a movement being right, on the record, over and over, until reporters knew who to call.

THREE PIECES, AND WHY EACH ONE EXISTS

I wrote three different things for this anniversary, deliberately, because they are aimed at three different rooms. Here is what each one is for.

We Made a Promise to the Afghans; We’re Breaking It on Purpose, which ran in the Orlando Sentinel and then in the Las Vegas Weekly, the Santa Maria Times, the Lompoc Record, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and the DC Journal. This one is the blunt version, built for regional papers where a member of Congress actually reads the opinion page over coffee. Its whole job is the word “purpose.” Not a backlog, not a bureaucratic snarl. A decision, made by people with names, that can be unmade by those same people.

Read it in the Orlando Sentinel

America’s Promise to Our Afghan Allies Is Still Unfinished Five Years Later in Fox News, written with Myal Greene, the President and CEO of World Relief. This one exists because the audience that most needs to hear this is not the audience that already agrees. It is co-signed by an evangelical humanitarian leader and a Navy veteran, and it makes the case on the ground where it will actually change minds: a promise made, national security, and the character of the country that made it.

Read it in Fox News

The Afghan Betrayal Was a Choice That Happened When You Weren’t Looking, on my own Substack. This is the long one, and it is the fullest accounting I have written of how a working system was taken apart one quiet decision at a time. It is not an op-ed and it is not neutral. It is from my heart, and if you only read one of the three, read this one.

Read the long version

Now write yours. Op-eds do not require a title or a platform. They require a specific story and a clear ask, and local editors are hungrier for them than people realize. If you have carried a case, sat in a courtroom, welcomed a family to your town, or served alongside the people we are talking about, you have the credential that matters and I do not have to tell you what to say.

A few things that help. Keep it to 600 or 750 words. Open with your own connection instead of the policy, because a reader in your county will keep going for a neighbor and stop for a statistic. Make one ask, not five, and name the member of Congress you want to hear it. Send it to your paper’s opinion editor with a two-line note about who you are. Regional dailies, weeklies, veteran outlets, and faith publications all publish this kind of piece, and a letter to the editor works too if 700 words is more than you have in you this week.

Once your words are public tell us, both so we can amplify it and because a wall of these, published in different states in the same month, is a thing Washington notices in a way it does not notice any one of us.

THE VOICES OF OUR ALLIES

Every week my inbox fills with letters from Afghans. We are going to start sharing a few, always without names or anything that could identify anyone, because these are the voices this is actually about and they are almost never in the room.

An Afghan mother, stranded in Pakistan with five young children, wrote on Saturday.

I have been waiting for years for my case to be resolved and have completed the required steps, but I am still living in uncertainty.

An Afghan man still inside Afghanistan, who submitted his ties information to IOM in September 2024 and has heard nothing since, wrote to thank us anyway.

The real Afghans will never ignore your struggles. But still I am stuck in Afghanistan.

An Afghan family who were at the Kabul airport on the day of the Abbey Gate bombing, and who are now in Pakistan, sent five sentences. This is the one we cannot put down.

We are living in Pakistan without a destiny, waiting for the unknown.

A former employee of the United States Embassy in Kabul wrote about what the last five years have cost him.

For nearly five years, I and my family have endured extremely difficult and uncertain circumstances, hardships that I never imagined I would have to experience.

And an Afghan man in the P-2 pipeline, still in Afghanistan, who has completed every stage asked of him, wrote a single line that is really addressed to Washington rather than to us.

We have been waiting for protection and hope that the United States will not abandon us.

Then, starting Sunday morning, they wrote together. Message after message from Afghan P1 and P2 families stranded in Pakistan, arriving separately, carrying the same collective request. They are asking for one page. A single document that speaks for all of them rather than any one family, laying out what they are living through: years of waiting, cases that stopped moving, deportation threats, expired visas and documents, economic collapse, children who cannot go to school. They asked that it be carried to Congress and put into someone’s hands rather than left on a desk.

We do not want our voices to stop at an office desk.

Consider it received. We are building that one-pager, and we are going to lift these voices as far as we can carry them.

REST. CLOSE THE LAPTOP. AND THEN COME BACK, READY TO FINISH THE MISSION.

These two weeks are brutal, every single year. August 15 is when Kabul fell. August 26 is Abbey Gate. August 30 is the last flight out. For a lot of people reading this, that is not a timeline. It is an anniversary of the worst days of their lives, arriving on schedule, whether or not they have the capacity for it this year.

If you are Afghan, this fortnight asks you to relive a country’s collapse while your own case sits open. If you spent your youth in that war, it asks you to sit with names and faces and decisions that were never yours to make, while people who were not there explain what it all meant. If you have spent five years doing casework for strangers, it asks you to do it while carrying everyone whose case you could not move.

None of that is weakness. It is the bill that comes due when you care this much, this long, against this much resistance.

You are allowed to close the laptop. You are allowed to skip the five year milestone coverage entirely.

Free legal help, pathway information, safety guidance, and mental health and crisis support are all at afghanevac.org/resources, and they are there for you whether you are in Kabul, Doha, Islamabad, or down the street from us in San Diego. Use them, and send them to someone who will not ask on their own.

The work will still be here in September. So will we.

WHERE THINGS STAND

• The First Circuit told the government no on most of it. On August 14, Judges Lara Montecalvo, Seth Aframe, and Joshua Dunlap ruled on the administration’s emergency stay motion in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, No. 26-1703. They granted the stay as to one policy and denied it as to the other two, finding the government “has not met its burden.” Two of the four USCIS policies struck down in June remain vacated, and USCIS is required to adjudicate. The one the administration won back, Comprehensive Re-Review, is the one that reaches backward into cases that were already approved. The government’s opening brief is due September 10.

• Camp As Sayliyah is running out of calendar. Around 1,039 Afghans remain in Qatar, more than half women, more than half children, 150 are the immediate family of American service members stranded in what has become a prison camp. The site is slated to close September 30, forty-four days from today (we do not believe this will happen). On August 7, 35 members of Congress led by Rep. Scott Peters and Sen. Richard Blumenthal wrote to the State Department demanding these vetted allies be processed first. Read the letter. We have raised CAS with senior State officials repeatedly since January 2025. The people there are approved and the vetting is done. What is missing is a decision.

• September is the fight. The presidential determination for fiscal year 2027 is due next month, and what we are hearing is that the administration intends to build it around roughly 22,000 Afrikaners from South Africa. For scale, the entire FY26 ceiling was 17,500, the second lowest ever. We are not going to argue about who should be excluded. Afghans belong in that number, and P1 and P2 cases were stopped at the White House, which means the White House can restart them.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Write your representative and ask them to cosponsor the Afghanistan TPS Act, H.R. 9899 / S.5308.

• Read and share the Five Years On series at reports.afghanevac.org. Four reports built entirely on primary sources, so nobody has to take anyone’s word for what happened, including ours. You can endorse the recommendations in the Unfinished Mission and arm us to cause the change needed to ensure this never happens again.

• Read and share the Afghan-American Foundation’s Five Years On report. It documents what Afghan American communities actually are, told by Afghan Americans, which is exactly as it should be.

• Stay ready for September. The fiscal year 2027 refugee determination lands next month and we will need volume, fast, at both the White House and Congress. Make sure you are subscribed so you get the alert the day it drops.

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

Five years on

• While Taliban leaders mark 5 years in power in Afghanistan, a UN official warns of a rights crisis -- PBS NewsHour

• Taliban mark five years back in power in Afghanistan as aid groups warn of crisis -- NBC News

• Entrenched, Embattled and Defiant, the Taliban Celebrate 5 Years in Power -- The New York Times

• The Taliban Kicked the U.S. Out of Afghanistan. Now They Want It Back. -- The New York Times

• Five years after Kabul fell, the reckoning over Afghanistan is far from over -- CBC News

The Afghans America made promises to

• They fought for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Now they worry about losing their green cards -- NPR

• Rounds’ bill would recognize service of America’s Afghan allies during war -- Ripon Advance

• Trump has chance to fix fallout from Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal -- The Washington Times

Inside Afghanistan

• What America Owes to Afghan Women -- The New York Times

• A total collapse, women’s rights in Afghanistan under the Taliban -- The Christian Science Monitor

• Concerns grow over increased global ties with Taliban in Afghanistan -- The Guardian

• 25 Years in Afghanistan review, the extraordinary life of an optimist -- The Guardian

How our allies are handling it

• Taliban Regained Power in Afghanistan, UK Afghan Allies Fear Reprisal Over Resettlement Delays -- NewsCord

• Canada, other countries urged to learn from Afghan resettlement experience -- The Globe and Mail

• The world set Afghanistan up to fail, and now it has forgotten its people -- The Globe and Mail

From us

• We Made a Promise to the Afghans; We’re Breaking It on Purpose -- Orlando Sentinel

• America’s promise to our Afghan allies is still unfinished five years later — Fox News

• The Afghan Betrayal Was a Choice That Happened When You Weren’t Looking — Substack

Our reports

• The Allied Ledger -- #AfghanEvac and Local Staff International

• The Unfinished Mission -- #AfghanEvac

• Protection Promised -- #AfghanEvac

Five years ago the world watched Afghans run alongside an airplane and decided that image was the story.

It was not.

The story is the twenty-two-inch stack of paper.

It is the woman who found one person willing to talk and filed anyway.

It is the mother who completed every step and is still waiting, and the SIV applicant who wrote to us asking not for his own case but for all of them.

Most of the people who have held this promise together will never be thanked.

In September a president will sign a piece of paper deciding who this country still makes room for, and Afghans have every right to be on it.

We intend to be very loud about that.

Take the rest you need first. Then find us.

The mission that began in the airlift is not finished and it has been a rough road for the last year and a half, but this was the best week for Afghan legislation in months. In a single forty-eight hour stretch, the Afghanistan TPS Act picked up a Senate companion, a new bipartisan bill, the ARCH Act, was introduced to make sure the record of our allies’ service can never be erased, and 35 members of Congress sent a letter to Secretaries Rubio, Mullin, and Hegseth about Camp As Sayliyah.

Two bills, both chambers, both parties.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Register for the Global Alliance Update on Wednesday, August 12, a state of the movement at 8:00 AM Pacific and 4:00 PM in London. You will hear from leaders from the U.S., U.K, Canada, and more. Then AfghanEvac, in partnership with Local Staff International, will release The Allied Ledger. Sign up at afghanevac.org/global-alliance-update.

• Tell your members of Congress to cosponsor the Afghanistan TPS Act. The bill now has a House version, H.R. 9899, and a Senate companion introduced August 6. It takes ninety seconds and routes to your Representative and both Senators at afghanevac.org/tps.

• Back the new ARCH Act. The Afghan Ally Records and Credential Heritage Act was introduced in the Senate on August 7. Ask your senators to support it, and organizations can endorse, at afghanevac.org/arch.

• Comment on the rule that killed the asylum interview before September 28. It applies retroactively to cases already pending, so if you or someone you love is in the affirmative asylum backlog, this is your case. File at afghanevac.org/asylum-interview-action.

• Read and share The Unfinished Mission. Our five-year accounting of the Special Immigrant Visa program is at reports.afghanevac.org/unfinished-mission. Post it and tag your members of Congress.

FIVE YEARS ON, THE FIRST GOOD WEEK IN MONTHS

Five years is long enough to learn the difference between motion and progress. This week was progress. The task now is to keep it moving as far down the field before the anniversary coverage fades and the offices go quiet again.

Five years after the fall of Kabul, the honest measure of the mission is not a speech. It is a count. We laid the whole record out this week in a new report, The Unfinished Mission, the first full accounting of seventeen years of the Special Immigrant Visa program, and it broke through to national television with a segment on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper.

And then Congress moved. On August 6, the Afghanistan TPS Act gained a Senate companion, so protection from deportation can now advance on both sides of the Capitol at once. On August 7, a bipartisan quartet of senators, Mike Rounds, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Coons, and Thom Tillis, introduced the ARCH Act, the Afghan Ally Records and Credential Heritage Act, to make sure the government preserves the proof of who these allies are and what they did. Two Republicans and two Democrats on each bill. Members do not put their names on Afghan legislation during a recess by accident. They do it because they have decided it is worth the cost.

We are clear-eyed about what these bills are and are not. Neither bill puts people on a plane tomorrow, and we will not pretend otherwise. What they do is build the legal architecture that outlasts any single administration, protection from removal for those already here, and a permanent, verifiable record of service for those still in danger. That architecture is how a promise stops lurching from crisis to crisis and becomes law. AfghanEvac endorses both, and our ask this week is simple. Turn support into cosponsors, because the cosponsor list is the one thing that forces a hearing.

Our Policy Page

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT AS THE RUMORS SPREAD

SIV issuances have not resumed. All visa interviews, for every type of case, are still being denied. The travel ban that bars Afghan entry is still in force. No bill has passed, no program has restarted in the background, and nothing has quietly reopened.

So where is the confusion coming from? One court ruling, misread. On July 30, a federal court ordered the State Department to process I-730 following-to-join cases for the family members of people already granted asylum in the United States, because the travel ban never applied to those cases in the first place. The ruling is real, and it is welcome, but it is narrow. It moved a single category, the relatives of approved asylees, and it moved nothing else. Somewhere between the courthouse and the group chat, “a court ordered State to issue travel documents in a handful of asylum cases” became “visas are being issued again.” They are not.

We are seeing a flood of bad information as a result, across social media, in WhatsApp groups, and on Facebook, some of it honest confusion and some of it outright scams. If you see a post claiming the doors have reopened, or anyone asking for money to move your case, stop and verify before you act.

Here is what is actually true, and one practical step for families with an appointment in Islamabad.

The one narrow exception, I-730 reunification for people already granted asylum

If you have been granted asylum in the United States, the travel ban never applied to your following-to-join family members, because the proclamation exempts asylees in its own text. A federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia confirmed this on July 30 and ordered the State Department to process travel documents for approved family members it had wrongly held up.

This ruling is narrow. It reaches only the I-730 relatives of people with approved asylum. It does not reopen SIV, refugee, or parole travel, and it does not lift the travel ban for anyone else. If this is your situation, talk to a trusted immigration attorney before you act.

We STILL recommend postponing or rescheduling visa interviews.

Why it matters Hope is not a plan, and a scammer’s promise is not a policy change. Right now the fastest way to protect a family is accurate information, the real status of the ban, the single narrow exception that exists, and the exact steps that actually reach a person.

WHAT THE ARCH ACT ACTUALLY DOES

The ARCH Act answers a quiet emergency. As the pipeline stalls and records scatter, an ally’s single most valuable asset, the documented proof that they served alongside American forces, can disappear. The Afghan Ally Records and Credential Heritage Act directs the Department of Defense to verify and preserve the service records and biometric data of at-risk Afghan allies within 180 days, and to stand up a secure online portal so that an individual, a designee, or a representative can apply from anywhere, including inside Afghanistan, to have that service documented and protected.

It is written for the people the Taliban hunts first. Afghan special operations forces, pilots, intelligence officers, judges, prosecutors, and defense officials who served at least a year between December 22, 2001, and September 1, 2021. The bill was introduced August 7 by Senators Rounds, Klobuchar, Coons, and Tillis, and it stands as a companion to Section 1080 of the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which gives it two paths forward, on its own or inside the must-pass defense bill.

Why it matters A revoked approval or a lost file can turn a decorated ally into a stranger the system does not recognize. Preserving the record is not a clerical nicety. It is the difference between a case that can be reopened and a person the United States can pretend it never knew.

Learn more and ACT

THE TPS ACT NOW MOVES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE CAPITOL

The Afghanistan TPS Act designates Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status through July 1, 2029, which for the length of the designation means an Afghan national already here cannot be deported to Afghanistan and can apply to work legally. The House bill, H.R. 9899, was introduced July 23 by Reps. Jason Crow, Don Bacon, Sam Liccardo, and Maria Elvira Salazar. On August 6 it gained a Senate companion, and that matters, because a bill moving in one chamber is a request while a bill moving in both is a plan.

The path from here is a cosponsorship fight, and it is the cheapest, most effective thing any reader can do. Members count the messages from home. A constituent asking their own representative and senators to sign on is what turns a bipartisan introduction into a bill leadership cannot ignore.

Act on TPS now

Why it matters TPS is the emergency brake. It does not grant a green card or replace the SIV these families earned, but it stops a deportation while the larger promise is kept, and for an ally living one policy reversal away from removal, that floor is the ground to stand on.

CONGRESS PRESSES STATE ON CAMP AS SAYLIYAH

Thirty-five members of Congress, led by Rep. Scott Peters and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, told Secretaries Rubio, Mullin, and Hegseth this week to stop stalling on the roughly 1,100 vetted allies stranded at Camp As Sayliyah before it closes September 30. Restart processing, brief Congress, and move no one without their consent.

Read the letter

This letter was signed by Democrats. The one before it, from Jason Crow and Don Bacon, was bipartisan. Both are right, because keeping this promise has never belonged to one party, and every form of oversight and engagement counts. The administration ignored the June 24 briefing that earlier letter demanded. It should not ignore this one. Keep the letters coming.

Why it matters Oversight is how a closing date becomes a plan instead of an abandonment. We want the momentum to keep moving, from both sides of the aisle.

Share our post about the letter

THE GLOBAL ALLIANCE UPDATE: A STATE OF THE MOVEMENT

This Tuesday, August 12, at 8:00 AM Pacific and 4:00 PM in London, we host the Global Alliance Update, and this one is a state of the mission. It is free and virtual, and it brings the fight into one room across two continents.

The speakers are Ambassador Tim Davis (U.S.), MP Johnny Mercer(U.K), EUROMIL President Emmanuel Jacob, Major General (Retired) Denis Thompson (Canada), and HIAS CEO Dr. Beth Oppenheim. Dr. Sara De Jonge and Jon Feltham from Local Staff International will join me to lead the briefing.

We use the hour to take stock and to build. We unveil The Allied Ledger, our accounting of how allied nations have supported their wartime partners and where the gaps remain, alongside new Guidelines for the Rights and Protection of Local Staff, developed with Local Staff International to set a standard for protecting mission partners in the conflicts still to come. This is the recognition that the United States is not the only government that made promises, and not the only one being measured against them.

Register today

IN PLEASANTON, THE COMMUNITY SHOWED UP

We attended a legal clinic and town hall in Pleasanton, hosted by the Afghan-American Community Organization and CAIR-California. Immigration attorney and AACO board member Spojmie Nasiri and I ran the town hall together, taking questions from families who drove in for straight answers. The clinic did the practical work this moment demands, screenings and know-your-rights guidance delivered in Pashto, Dari, and English by people who do this every day. A huge thanks to AACO and CAIR-California, who keep showing up for this community and made the day happen.

INTERNATIONAL: THE RETURNS HAVE NOT STOPPED

While Congress debated protection, the machinery of forced return kept grinding across the region. Pakistan’s deportation drive continues, with thousands of Afghans pushed back across the border on some single days this year, families among them, under a repatriation plan that has swept up people with valid documents alongside the undocumented. The United Nations has again urged Islamabad to halt the forced returns, and warned that Afghans sent back face a growing risk of trafficking as the crises inside the country deepen.

Why it matters Every week the pipeline stays frozen, the decision is made somewhere else, at a border crossing or on a deportation charter, by governments that will not wait for Washington to finish deciding.

IN THE NEWS

• The Unfinished Mission on CNN, The Lead with Jake Tapper -- CNN

• Report: Hundreds of thousands of Afghans shut out of US resettlement -- KPBS

• The Unfinished Mission on KPBS -- KPBS

• We’re purposefully breaking promise to Afghans -- Charleston Gazette-Mail

• Who Really Abandoned Afghanistan? -- J.D. Marks

• Shawn VanDiver and Beth Bailey on Five Years of Advocacy, The Afghanistan Project Podcast Ep. 150 -- The Afghanistan Project

• Uncertain Future for Afghan Refugees; Qatar Camp to Close -- TOLOnews

• State Department ordered to process travel documents for families of Afghan refugees in lawsuit -- Stars and Stripes

Five years is not an anniversary. It is an indictment, and it is a choice about what the sixth year looks like.

Last week, a bipartisan group of Senators decided the sixth year should include a record that cannot be erased and a protection that cannot be revoked on a whim, and members of Congress put their names to a demand that the people at Camp As Sayliyah not be abandoned.

That is not the finish line. It is the first stretch of open road we have seen in a long time, and open road is only worth anything if we drive it.

So cosponsor the bills, register for Tuesday, make some noise. The allies America vetted are still here, still waiting, and still organizing. So are we.

The first happened in the Federal Register, on a Tuesday, in a rule that became effective the moment it was published. USCIS can now send certain affirmative asylum applicants directly to immigration court based on the paper file alone. No interview first. No notice, no comment, and no chance to object before implementation. And it reaches cases that are already pending.

The second happened in a Virginia courtroom, on a Thursday and it’s HUGE. A federal judge set aside the policy that has been using the travel ban to keep approved family members of Afghan asylees out of the country. Not a waiver for the seven people who sued. The policy itself. It should mean a lot of families finally get to come.

Elsewhere, a secretive removal court created in 1996 held its first hearing, Britain admitted it endangered 18,500 of its own allies and found nobody to blame, and we received hundreds of letters from Afghans awaiting processing around the world.

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ACTION THIS WEEK

• Comment on the Employment Authorization Document rule before Tuesday. This is the last real chance. Comments close August 4, Docket USCIS-2026-0067. More than 3,100 comments are already in.

• Comment on the rule that just abolished the guarantee of an affirmative asylum interview. The interim final rule took effect July 28 and comments close September 28.

• Ask your House member to cosponsor the Afghanistan TPS Act, H.R. 9899. Two members joined on July 30, and there are now six cosponsors from three parties. Over 650 letters from 48 states plus DC have gone to Congress. Two have not sent a single letter: Montana and North Dakota. Send yours in ninety seconds.

• Register for the Global Alliance Update on August 12. We release The Allied Ledger and new Guidelines for the Rights and Protection of Local Staff with Local Staff International.

TWO WINS IN COURT

On July 30, Judge Anthony Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the administration cannot use the travel ban to block family members of people already granted asylum here. The proclamations exempt asylees by their own text, the court found, and the State Department’s contrary policy was unlawful and must be set aside.

The government has fifteen days to issue travel documents to five approved family members and must reconsider two more applications without applying the ban. The plaintiffs are seven Afghan allies granted asylum in the United States. The International Refugee Assistance Project litigated it.

Watch and share our video

The same day, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled 2 to 1 that the administration cannot deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested inside the United States, rejecting an attempt to extend mandatory detention far beyond border arrests. At least four other circuits have now rejected that policy. Two have gone the other way, and the administration has already asked the Supreme Court to take it up.

Why it matters Family reunification for Afghan asylees was quietly strangled by a policy nobody voted on, and a court just undid it. Wins like this hold only if the government complies and only if they survive appeal, so watch the fifteen-day deadline as closely as you watched the ruling.

USCIS ENDED THE GUARANTEED AFFIRMATIVE ASYLUM INTERVIEW

On July 28, the Department of Homeland Security published an interim final rule and made it effective the same day. It lets U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services send an affirmative asylum application to immigration court on the paper file alone. No interview. The rule strips the language indicating applicants have a right to one, drops the requirement that a referral letter assess credibility, and lets an officer deny a discretionary claim without ever determining whether the person is a refugee.

This is retroactive, and that is the part to understand. It is not a rule for people who file from here on. It reaches into the backlog, applying to 444,724 applications already pending, every one filed by someone who was told an interview was coming. For Afghan families who were brought here by the U.S. government but don’t yet have durable status, it is close to a blanket, because parole delays this government created pushed most Afghan affirmative filers past the one-year mark, which is exactly the category the rule targets. If your case is in that queue, this is not a debate about future policy. It already applies to you.

Think about who is in that queue. Allies whose Chief of Mission approval was revoked have been filing affirmatively on the advice of counsel, because it was the door still open. Their strongest evidence is not a document. It is the account they give out loud, to a person, under questioning. That is what an asylum interview is for. Removing it does not streamline these cases. It removes the only place where the facts of them can surface.

The rule can still be changed. An interim final rule can be amended, withdrawn, or vacated, and the record built between now and September 28 is what a court reads when someone challenges it, so file a comment and do not let the timing convince you it is pointless.

File a comment

We have the explainer ready to go and a simple ask for every attorney reading this. If you have an Afghan client with a pending affirmative case, check the file this week. Do not assume an interview is coming.

Read the explainer

Why it matters An asylum claim is won or lost on testimony. Take away the chance to testify and you have not made a process faster; you have decided the outcome and skipped the part where anyone listens. For an Afghan ally whose Chief of Mission approval was already pulled, that is the difference between a defense and a deportation.

THE TPS ACT GREW WHILE CONGRESS WAS OUT OF TOWN

The Afghanistan TPS Act of 2026, H.R. 9899, picked up two more cosponsors on July 30, Reps. Kevin Kiley of California and Lateefah Simon of California. That brings the bill to six cosponsors from three parties, alongside sponsor Rep. Jason Crow and original cosponsors Sam Liccardo, Maria Elvira Salazar, Don Bacon, and Bill Keating.

Members added their names during a recess, which tells you these were not floor-vote decisions made under pressure. They were choices. Our own count puts constituent letters past 650 in less than a week, but two states are still at zero. If you live in Montana or North Dakota, you can personally help us ensure lawmakers have heard from Americans in all 50 states and DC that they want our allies protected.

Help us keep the pressure on

Why it matters A bill that grows during recess has real support underneath it. Every cosponsor makes it harder for congressional leadership to ignore.

EXPECT AN EXTENSION AT CAS, NOT A DECISION

I spent the end of last week in Doha, meeting with people who work on this every day. I am not going to characterize those conversations. What I will tell you is what I came home believing.

Camp As Sayliyah is on the books to close September 30, and that date is soft. The International Organization for Migration’s contract at the site now runs through the end of the year, and the State Department has not worked out what it intends to do with the exactly 1,039 people still there. An extension is what happens when nobody makes a decision, and I would expect one.

The path forward is not complicated and it has not changed. Bring the people who have not been denied to the United States. They were vetted, they were approved, and the only thing between them and a flight is a signature nobody wants to put on paper. For the smaller number who have been denied, find them a safe place to go, deliberately and with their consent, rather than scrambling when a deadline arrives. That is the entire plan. It does not require new law, a new appropriation, or a new agreement with anyone. It requires the State Department to choose.

Why it matters Every extension buys time that nobody is spending. The families at Camp As Sayliyah are not waiting on a process, they are waiting on a decision, and the longer it goes unmade the more it starts to look like the decision itself.

See our CAS Explainer

A DORMANT DEPORTATION COURT IS NOW RUNNING

A removal court created in 1996, but never used, has held its first hearing. We are watching not only because of the respondent, but because a proceeding built to use classified evidence could eventually be pointed at people whose files are thick with wartime intelligence reporting.

That is our community.

On July 30, the Alien Terrorist Removal Court heard the case of Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old Afghan lawful permanent resident in Fort Worth, Texas. The Justice Department accuses her of supporting her family’s Election Day shooting plot. Her son and son-in-law have already pleaded guilty.

We are not defending her and we take no position on her guilt. The allegations are grave, and if the government can prove them it should.

Our concern is the machinery. This court can rely on classified evidence a respondent cannot fully review and uses a lower burden of proof than a criminal trial. Yet the underlying plot was prosecuted in public, and the guilty pleas are on a public docket. Choosing the secretive forum when the open one worked raises questions about why this court is attractive and who might be next.

Afghan allies carry files filled with intelligence fragments, informant reporting, and unverified derogatory information collected in a combat zone. We already see Chief of Mission approvals revoked without an explanation or a record to contest. A removal process designed to use secret evidence fits that population uncomfortably well.

We are flagging it now, before it happens, rather than writing about it afterward.

Why it matters A court unused for thirty years is now active. Exceptional government powers rarely remain confined to the first case used to justify them.

THE LETTERS

Three groups of Afghans wrote to us this week and did not coordinate with one another. SIV applicants in Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, who organized their own advocacy and gathered videos, photographs, and signatures. P-1, P-2, and refugee families in Pakistan, asking for an attorney who can look at cases frozen for years. And families refused under Section 212(f), turned away by a proclamation rather than anything in their file. They described the same life. Documents expiring, children out of school, rent unpaid, police at the door despite a pending case. One put it plainly: “We are not asking for special treatment. We are simply asking for protection, dignity, and the opportunity for our pending cases to be processed in a timely manner.”

One letter said they have written for nearly a year without hearing SIV cases raised in our meetings or public remarks, and we would rather give a straight answer than an easy one. We raise these cases every week, in congressional meetings, filings, reports, and the pathways tool we built for this purpose. What we do not do is name every population in every post, because a post that lists everyone says nothing to anyone.

These policies are almost never written for one population. Section 212(f) does not distinguish between an interpreter with an approved visa and a P-2 applicant awaiting a referral, and the travel ban does not check which program you are in. That is why we attack the proclamation, the rule, and the funding decision rather than arguing category by category. When the thing itself falls, it falls for all of you at once. Send your materials, we will use them, and on a week when your program name does not appear, do not read that as absence.

Why it matters The paperwork sorts you into programs. The policy does not. One proclamation reaches an interpreter in Herat, a journalist in Islamabad, and a family already approved, in the same afternoon. That is why we fight the policy and not the category.

See our response on Instagram

THE AGENCY MAKING “WELLNESS” CALLS IS SHARING INFORMATION WITH ICE

On July 28, Reuters reported that the Office of Refugee Resettlement has passed more than 460,000 leads to immigration enforcement since January 2025, contributing to thousands of arrests of children and the sponsors who took them in. Hold that next to what we flagged two weeks ago. The same office is placing what it calls wellbeing calls to roughly 800 Afghan arrivals, asking about identity, household composition, and immigration status, with answers that are not anonymous and may be kept for fifteen years.

Our guidance has not changed, and this week it hardened. You are not required to answer. Not where you live, not your status, not anything about your family or your case. Declining does not affect your benefits. If you have a case pending, talk to a trusted immigration attorney or your resettlement agency before you say a word.

Why it matters A government agency created to help vulnerable immigrants has also been supplying information to immigration enforcement. That is the context for every call an Afghan family receives, and why “just a wellness check” is not a safe assumption.

BRITAIN NAMES ITS FAILURE

On July 30, the House of Commons Defence Committee released “Shifting heaven and earth? The Afghan data breach and resettlement schemes,” its report on the Ministry of Defence breach that compromised more than 18,500 applications and put far more people than that in danger, including families. The committee called it a foreseeable systemic failure, found it was buried under secrecy for far too long, and noted that no individual appears to have been held personally accountable.

Why it matters Every allied government watching this outcome learns the same lesson, that the cost of failing Afghan allies is a report. Accountability that arrives without consequence teaches the next ministry exactly how little is at stake.

See our statement

INTERNATIONAL: WHAT THE UN COUNTED IN THREE MONTHS

On July 28, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan published its quarterly human rights update for April through June, with two annexes. In three months, the Taliban’s vice ministry arbitrarily arrested 389 people. Authorities carried out 137 judicial corporal punishments including public floggings. They arbitrarily arrested 29 former members of the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces, and they killed eight. In the same quarter, 120,000 men sat university entrance exams and not one woman or girl did.

The first annex is about one city’s dress code. In Herat, between June 6 and 8, inspectors arrested at least 30 women and girls for not wearing chadors and sent them to the provincial prison. When residents of the Jibreil area, a Shi’a Hazara neighborhood, protested peacefully on June 9, plainclothes security forces beat them, shot at them, killed a boy, and arrested at least 17. In the days after, intelligence officials stopped people at random to search their phones for protest footage, and women stopped going outside.

The second annex counts cross-border civilian casualties, 399 in the quarter, 57 killed and 342 injured, among them 112 children. UNAMA attributes all of them to Pakistani security forces. The worst came on June 28 in Paktya, where an airstrike collapsed a three-storey house and the local mosque called on neighbors to help dig out the survivors. Twenty minutes later, Pakistani forces struck the same house again. Twenty-two killed, at least 185 injured, most of them by the second strike. Separately, on July 28 Germany put 31 Afghan men on a deportation charter to Kabul. One had no criminal record at all.

Read the reports

Why it matters Eight former Afghan security force members killed in ninety days is the answer to anyone who claims returns to Afghanistan are safe. That is the country the United States is sending people back toward, and the one families in Qatar are waiting not to be sent to.

DOMESTIC DETENTIONS RAMPING UP

ICE has recently increased detentions at domestic U.S. airports. Arrests have occurred at departure gates and arrivals, reportedly using passenger information shared through government travel systems.

People without secure immigration status may face detention even on domestic flights. Having a pending application or valid work permit does not necessarily prevent an arrest. Those potentially at heightened risk include:

1. Former TPS holders. Afghanistan’s TPS designation was terminated effective July 14, 2025. Former beneficiaries who do not have another lawful status may be exposed to enforcement.

2. People with pending applications. Filing for asylum, an SIV, adjustment of status, or another form of protection does not necessarily provide lawful status or prevent ICE from making an arrest while the application remains pending.

3. People whose visas or authorized periods of stay have expired. A pending immigration application or valid employment authorization document does not, by itself, guarantee protection from detention.

4. People with prior arrests or criminal records. Criminal convictions, pending charges, and, in some circumstances, prior arrests may increase scrutiny or create additional immigration consequences. Lawful permanent residents can also face detention depending on the nature of their records and travel history.

The legal risks vary significantly by person. Citizenship, lawful permanent residence, parole, a pending application, and employment authorization are not interchangeable, and none of this guidance should substitute for advice about an individual case.

Why it matters The categories of people being detained at airports appear to have widened significantly. Based on the current pattern, we recommend that Afghans without U.S. citizenship or secure lawful status consult a qualified immigration attorney before flying. Lawful permanent residents with any arrest, charge, or conviction should also seek individualized legal advice before traveling.

Learn more about airport detentions

Consult an immigration lawyer for specific advice for your case, and make a safety plan in the event of any detention.

SOMETHING WORTH KNOWING

The federal contract funding legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children expired on July 31, stripping counsel from more than 25,000 children. Immigration arrests hit 1,474 a day through July 11, the fastest pace of this administration.

And the Dorcas fight comes to a head this week. Plaintiffs’ response to the government’s emergency motion to stay is due today (August 3) in the First Circuit, and the government’s opening merits brief is due August 11. Until that stay motion is decided, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services must keep adjudicating Afghan cases. The court could rule any day, so watch this one.

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court

• Secretive terrorist removal court set for first hearing in Afghan woman’s case -- CNN

• Alien Terrorist Removal Court holds its first-ever hearing after 30 years -- NPR

• Afghan woman plans to fight DOJ efforts to deport her over allegation she is an ‘alien terrorist’ -- CBS News

• Administration to use secretive deportation court for the first time -- UPI

• Justice Department files first case in U.S. Alien Terrorist Removal Court -- U.S. Department of Justice

The asylum rule and the courts

• Affirmative Asylum Referrals Without Interview -- Federal Register

• New rule could speed deportation of asylum seekers -- The Hill

• Federal Judge Rejects Travel Ban Use Against Afghan Asylees’ Families -- Global Refuge

• US appeals court rejects Trump expansion of mandatory migrant detention -- Al Jazeera

Enforcement and detention

• Thousands of children, sponsors arrested by ICE after tips from US child migrant agency -- Reuters

• ICE Arrests Surge at Airports, Opening New Front in Deportation Drive -- The New York Times

• More than 25,000 children lose previous legal protections, as federal contract ends -- NPR

• ICE working to open four new detention facilities with space for 5,500 detainees -- NBC News

• Immigrant detention should not be a death sentence -- The Hill

• This Week by the {Immigration} Numbers (July 31, 2026) -- Austin Kocher

Britain’s reckoning

• Shifting heaven and earth? The Afghan data breach -- House of Commons Defence Committee

• UK lawmakers say Afghan allies were put at risk by secrecy, policy failures -- Amu TV

• MoD data breach was a ‘foreseeable’ failure that left Afghans in danger -- Radio NewsHub

Inside Afghanistan and the region

• A hijab inspection, a slap, a warning letter: Inside three months of Taliban rule -- UN News

• Former Afghan security personnel still face killings and torture, says UN -- Afghanistan International

• Over 130 publicly flogged in Afghanistan in three months, U.N. says -- Khaama Press

• Months of fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan have killed nearly 500 Afghan civilians, UN says -- Associated Press

• MSF urges Pakistan to halt forced returns of Afghan refugees -- Amu TV

• Returning Afghans face growing risk of trafficking as crises deepen -- UN News

• Germany deports 31 Afghans to Kabul on direct flight, including one without criminal record -- KabulNow

• Germany defends deporting non-criminal to Afghanistan -- The Local

The Afghanistan TPS Act

• Crow introduces bill to grant vulnerable Afghans Temporary Protected Status -- Office of Rep. Jason Crow

• New bipartisan bill aims to fulfill America’s promise to Afghan allies -- Office of Rep. Sam Liccardo

In two weeks it will be five years since Kabul fell, and the anniversary coverage is already being assigned.

Reporters will ask what changed.

Here is the honest answer: The machinery got quieter. A promise is not broken with a vote anymore, it is broken with a rule that publishes on a Tuesday and is law by lunch, and with a decision nobody in the State Department wants to sign.

Quiet is the point. It is harder to photograph and easier to deny.

So our mission, together, has got to be to make it loud.

File the comment, send the letter, take the leap, and put your name on the record where it can be counted.

Five years in, the allies America vetted are still here, still waiting, and still organizing.

So are we.

Three things are moving at once, and two are on the clock. Congress has a bipartisan bill that would protect Afghan allies who are already here. At the same time, the administration has advanced two rules that target those same people. One strips their right to work. The other lets the government put asylum seekers in front of a deportation judge without ever hearing them out. You can weigh in on all three from your couch or your desk, and it matters more than you would think, because federal agencies are legally required to read and respond to substantive public comments before a rule becomes final.

Everything below points to sites where we have already set up the emails to Congress and the comment forms for you. Pick at least one. Do it. Then send this to three people who will do the same.

Deadlines at a glance

• Work-authorization rule, comment by August 4. This is the most urgent. It is next week.

• Asylum “no-interview” rule, comment by September 28.

• Afghanistan TPS Act, no deadline, but every day counts. Act now.

1. Pass the bipartisan Afghanistan TPS Act (H.R. 9899)

On July 23, Representatives Jason Crow, Sam Liccardo, Don Bacon, and María Elvira Salazar, two Democrats and two Republicans, introduced the Afghanistan TPS Act of 2026.

It would designate Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status through July 2029, restoring protection from deportation and the right to work to Afghan allies already living here, the same people this administration stripped of that status even as the Taliban made conditions worse.

TPS is a bridge, not a destination. It protects people who are already here, already vetted, and already working in American communities while their cases catch up. Keeping faith with our allies has never been a partisan position, and the sponsors of this bill just proved it again.

Two ways to act, and we need you to do both.

As an individual, tell your representative to co-sponsor H.R. 9899 and push for a vote.

Write your Representative

As an organization, add your group to the endorsement list and lend your name to the coalition.

Endorse the bill

2. Stop the asylum “no-interview” rule (comment by September 28)

On July 28, DHS put into effect an interim final rule, “Affirmative Asylum Referrals Without Interview” (Docket USCIS-2026-0199). For the first time, it lets USCIS asylum officers send an affirmative asylum case to immigration court without ever interviewing the applicant, deciding it on the paperwork alone.

The asylum interview is often the only chance a person gets to explain, in their own words, why they fled and what waits for them if they are sent back. Take it away and the government can move someone toward deportation without ever hearing their story. Many Afghans who came through Operation Allies Welcome filed affirmative asylum claims. This rule reaches them.

It is already in effect, but the comment window is open, and public comments are how rules like this get challenged and changed.

Read our explainer

Act. Submit a comment opposing the rule before September 28.

Submit your comment

3. Protect Afghan allies’ right to work (comment by August 4, next week)

A DHS proposed rule, “Clarification of Discretionary Employment Authorization for Certain Aliens” (Docket USCIS-2026-0067), would let the government strip work authorization from people paroled into the United States, including the Afghan allies this country evacuated after the fall of Kabul.

These are people the United States flew here, vetted, and welcomed. Taking away their ability to work legally does not make anyone safer. It pushes vetted allies out of their jobs, off their leases, and into crisis, and it shifts the cost onto the communities and employers that depend on them.

This is the most urgent item on the list. The comment window closes August 4.

Act. Individuals or organizations can submit a comment opposing the rule before August 4, and we’ve made it easy.

Comment NOW on EADs

Organizations can also sign on to our organizational comment sign on letter

Sign on to our letter

Wear the ask, and take 25% off for reading this

We want to see Afghanistan TPS shirts everywhere. In Senate hallways, at district offices, and all over your feeds, because a bill moves faster when the people who decide can see how many of us are behind it.

Our new “Promises Aren’t Temporary” tee carries the name of the ask, H.R. 9899, right where people will read it. They look good, they start conversations, and every order puts real money behind this work and keeps us in the fight.

Because you opened this email, the first 50 orders are 25% off. Use code 25ATPS2026 at checkout, and move fast, because once 50 shirts are claimed the code is gone.

Get your shirt today

Wear it to the Hill. Wear it to the grocery store. Post it and tag us.

Do all of that and then do the one thing that multiplies all of it

Forward this to three people. Post it. Text it to the veteran who keeps asking how to help. Two minutes of your time moves the people who decide whether our Afghan wartime allies are protected or abandoned.

Share

They kept their promise to us. Now we must ensure our country keeps ours.

On the way out the door, a bipartisan group of House members moved to protect Afghans from deportation, while the House Judiciary Committee revived the harshest anti-asylum bill of the last decade.

In between, the pathways tool we built went everywhere, from Navy Times to Air Force Times, and the enforcement machine that has already killed two men in two weeks kept right on running.

Here is what moved, and what this week demands.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Ask your Representative to cosponsor the bipartisan Afghanistan TPS Act. Reps. Crow, Liccardo, Salazar, and Bacon introduced it last week to protect Afghans from deportation through July 1, 2029. Read our full analysis.

• Organizations: Comment on the proposed EAD rule, and add your organization’s name. Use the sign-on and the ready-to-file draft comment. The deadline is August 4

• Register for the Global Alliance Update. Join the August 12 virtual briefing with Local Staff International, where we release The Allied Ledger and new Guidelines for the Rights and Protection of Local Staff. Sign up today!

• Read and share the pathways tool and Protection Promised. Send V-PRIC, Protection Promised, and its Practitioner’s Companion to any Afghan family or any attorney with an Afghan client.

• Grab the “Promises Aren’t Temporary” shirt and wear your support. We just launched the Afghanistan TPS Act tee, and wearing it turns quiet support into something members of Congress can see.

A BIPARTISAN BILL TO STOP DEPORTING THE ALLIES WE PROMISED TO PROTECT

This week, Representatives Jason Crow, Sam Liccardo, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Don Bacon introduced the Afghanistan TPS Act of 2026, a bill to designate Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status from the day it becomes law through July 1, 2029. Two Democrats and two Republicans, one plain idea. Afghans who are already here should not be deported to a country run by the Taliban while their cases work through a system that has been deliberately and systematically slowed. AfghanEvac is proud to support it.

The administration terminated Afghanistan’s prior TPS designation. Congress is now moving to restore that protection by statute and place it beyond the reach of another executive reversal.

Afghan allies risked everything for this country. They deserve to rest easy and pursue the American dream while their immigration paperwork catches up, not live with fear hanging over every doctor’s appointment, every lease signing, and every school drop-off.

TPS is not the whole answer, and it is not a substitute for the visas and the pathways these families earned. It is a floor. It says the United States will not deport the people who stood beside its troops while it decides whether to keep the rest of its promise.

Read our Analysis

We will be pushing this hard. A bipartisan bill is only as strong as the coalition behind it, so the ask this week is direct. Write your Representative and tell them to cosponsor the Afghanistan TPS Act. More than 200,000 Afghans came through the vetting pipeline on the strength of America’s promise, and tens of thousands of them are living here now under a status this administration is trying to strip. This bill is a chance for Congress to say no. It is a choice, and this time it is the right one.

Ask your Representative to Cosponsor

We also launched the Promises Aren’t Temporary tee. Wear it to a town hall, a district office, or around your community, and turn quiet support into visible advocacy. Every dollar goes back into this fight.

Grab your shirt today!

Why it matters: Every Afghan family living under threat of deportation is one policy reversal away from being sent back to the people they fought. TPS would take that weapon off the table for the length of the designation, and a bipartisan bill is the strongest signal yet that keeping this promise is not a partisan act.

WE BUILT A TOOL, AND IT BROKE THROUGH

Last month we launched V-PRIC, the Visa Pathways and Relocation Information Center, a sourced and continuously verified guide to visa categories and resettlement options across 197 countries, with a Find My Pathway assistant that answers questions in more than 40 languages. This week, V-PRIC reached one of the audiences most capable of getting it into the right hands. Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times, Marine Corps Times, and Military Times carried the story, along with Ariana News and outlets across the Afghan diaspora.

That reach is operational. Veterans, attorneys, caseworkers, and families cannot use a tool they do not know exists. Every story expands the network connecting an Afghan at risk with credible information about what may still be possible.

Why it matters: Advocacy fails when the people who need help cannot find it. A tool covered from the Army Times to Ariana News is a tool that reaches the veteran, the caseworker, and the family in hiding, which is the entire point of building it.

Check out the V-PRIC today

THE DORCAS FIGHT CONTINUES

The government’s effort to freeze Afghan cases is now in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, where its appeal of the Dorcas ruling is moving, docket 26-1703.

A reminder: On July 15, Chief Judge John McConnell denied the government’s emergency request to pause USCIS adjudications while it appeals, so for now U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services must keep processing green card, work permit, citizenship, and asylum cases for Afghans and for others swept into the travel ban. The credit for that belongs to the litigators at Democracy Forward. The appeal continues, and we are watching the docket.

Last week, they asked the First Circuit for an emergency stay and responses are due August 3rd. We’ll let you know the outcome.

Why it matters: Every application adjudicated is a family moving closer to stability. The appeal continues, but this ruling proves that litigation can keep pathways open while the broader fight proceeds.

Visit our Litigation Tracker

A WARNING FOR FAMILIES: QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ROWI “WELLNESS-CHECK” CALLS

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is conducting outreach through what it calls the Refugee Outreach Wellness Initiative, or ROWI. Reporting indicates that these calls may seek personal information about respondents, their households, immigration status, employment, and other circumstances. We are concerned about that.

The government describes the initiative as an effort to identify needs and connect people with support. Afghan families and advocates have raised legitimate questions about how the information will be stored, used, and shared.

Before providing sensitive information, verify the caller’s identity, ask for written information about the program, and consider speaking with a qualified immigration attorney or accredited representative. Do not rely solely on caller ID, and do not assume that participation is required without first getting clear information.

Why it matters: A call framed as a wellness check is still a request for information, made by a government that has spent this year trying to track, detain, and remove the very people it once promised to protect. Knowing you can decline is protection. Say little, confirm who is calling, and get counsel before you share anything.

ANOTHER WARNING: THE USCIS NOTICES THAT QUIETLY CLOSE AFGHAN ASYLUM CASES

Multiple immigration attorneys have reported a concerning problem affecting some Afghans who filed for asylum after their Chief of Mission approval was revoked.

According to those practitioners, USCIS has uploaded an “affirmation notice” to some applicants’ online accounts requiring a signed response within a specified period. The notice may appear without a prominent alert that action is required. Attorneys have also reported cases being closed after the deadline passed, including some cases in which a response had reportedly been submitted.

AfghanEvac has not confirmed that this reflects a nationwide USCIS policy, but we’ve heard about these from multitple sources and the reports are serious enough to warrant immediate caution.

Check your myUSCIS account regularly, including the documents tab. If you see an affirmation notice, closure notice, or unfamiliar document, contact your immigration attorney immediately. Save copies of every notice, submission, and confirmation.

Why it matters: Missing an online notice may put an asylum application at risk. Do not navigate this process without qualified legal help.

This is general information, not individualized legal advice.

HOUSE JUDICIARY REVIVED THE WORST ANTI-ASYLUM BILL IN A DECADE

On July 21, the House Judiciary Committee marked up and advanced H.R. 9773, the “Permanent Trump Secure Border Act,” a revived version of the old HR2.

The bill would make sweeping changes to asylum screening, detention, humanitarian parole, and procedures involving unaccompanied children. It would raise barriers for many asylum seekers and significantly restrict the government’s ability to establish broad humanitarian parole programs.

Supporters argue that the legislation would deter unlawful migration and prevent abuse of the asylum system. Opponents, including our partners at Church World Service and more than 100 organizations, warn that it would block legitimate protection claims, expand detention, and close emergency pathways for people facing persecution.

For future mission partners, the parole restrictions are especially consequential. Parole is imperfect and temporary, but it remains one of the few emergency tools available when ordinary pathways fail.

Read our analysis

Why it matters: This bill has not become law, but it offers a blueprint for dramatically narrowing humanitarian protection across the immigration system.

PAKISTAN’S DEPORTATION MACHINE SPEEDS UP

Pakistan has intensified its deportation drive against Afghans, with more than 4,000 people pushed back across the border in a single day and a new enforcement push underway. Afghans with pending U.S. cases are being swept up alongside the undocumented, and families who fled the Taliban are being returned to it. This is the same pattern we have flagged for months, now running faster.

This is the population caught in the vise. Afghan P-1 and P-2 applicants to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, cleared through much of the process and then stranded when the pipeline stopped, are now sending coordinated appeals to AfghanEvac and our partners, pleading for their cases to be restarted before Pakistan deports them. The contrast with our own government matters. Under the last administration, the State Department pressed Islamabad directly to protect pipeline Afghans. This one has been unwilling to engage the same way, even as Pakistan accelerates. Allies caught between a government deporting them and a government that will not issue their visas are running out of ground to stand on.

Why it matters: A stalled American pipeline is not neutral when people are being returned to Taliban control. The United States still has tools it can use, including direct diplomatic engagement with Pakistan, emergency case prioritization, and renewed processing for those already in the pipeline. Delay is a policy choice. So is action.

ON THE HILL

This week, we briefed Democratic and Republican offices in both chambers on the TPS bill, the Pakistan emergency, and the reported USCIS notices affecting Afghan asylum applicants. Those conversations are helping turn community reports into congressional questions, oversight, and legislation.

Check out our updated policy page

SAVE THE DATE: FREE LEGAL HELP IN THE BAY AREA ON AUGUST 9

On Sunday, August 9, the Bay Area Afghan Legal and Community Resource Clinic runs from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the DoubleTree by Hilton Pleasanton at the Club, 7050 Johnson Drive, Pleasanton.

Hosted by CAIR-LA, the Afghan-American Community Organization, and state, local, and national partners, it offers Afghan families free one-on-one legal consultations with immigration attorneys, in language.

I will be there from 12:00 to 2:00 PM for a town hall on where things stand and what comes next, and to hear directly from the community. If you are in the Bay Area, come by, and tell a family who needs it.

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The wellness-check calls

• Federal agency seeks to interview Afghan immigrants, alarming refugee groups -- The Washington Post

• ‘Nefarious’ Trump plan to interview Afghan immigrants sparks deportation fears -- The Independent

• U.S. government plan to interview Afghan refugees raises deportation concerns -- Ariana News

The Afghanistan TPS Act

• Democrats and Republicans Want To Extend TPS for Afghans -- Newsweek

• Bipartisan House effort would let Afghans stay in the U.S. -- WORLD

The pathways tool

• New AI tool helps Afghan allies at risk find visa pathways -- Military Times

• New AI tool helps Afghan allies at risk find visa pathways -- Navy Times

• New AI tool helps Afghan allies at risk find visa pathways -- Air Force Times

• New AI tool helps Afghans identify visa pathways -- Ariana News

Congress and the border bill

• Markup of H.R. 9773, Permanent Trump Secure Border Act -- House Judiciary Committee

• House Republicans move to make Trump’s border policies permanent -- Fox News

The enforcement machine

• A Perfect ICE Storm: New Recruits, Less Training, and Deadly Shootings -- The Dispatch

• ICE Orders an End to Vehicle Stops After Deadly Shootings by Federal Agents -- The Intercept

Pakistan and the region

• Afghans Under Pressure Again In New Pakistani Deportation Drive -- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

• Over 4,000 Afghans Return from Pakistan in One Day as Deportations Intensify -- KabulNow

Five years after Kabul fell, the lines of this fight are becoming clearer. On one side of the Capitol, four members of Congress from both parties said plainly that America should not deport the people who stood with us. On the other, a committee advanced legislation that would close critical protection pathways.

That is the struggle in a single week. But the introduction of the Afghanistan TPS Act is proof that pressure works, bipartisan action remains possible, and this promise still has defenders. The promise remains unpaid. We intend to collect.

They said that the United States should not deport the Afghans who stood beside its troops. The Afghanistan TPS Act, now filed as H.R. 9899, is that idea written into law, and this is a special edition to explain it, because it is the clearest good news our community has had in months and it will only become law if we make it.

Here is what is inside.

• What the bill does, in plain language, and the one date that matters.

• How Temporary Protected Status actually shields an Afghan family, and what it does not do.

• What comes next, from the House cosponsorship push to a Senate companion in the works.

Start with the action, then read on.

ACTION TODAY

Tell your members of Congress to cosponsor and pass the Afghanistan TPS Act. Go to afghanevac.org/afghanistan-tps. It takes thirty seconds, it routes your message to your Representative and both Senators, and it presses them to move H.R. 9899. Afghans who fought for this country should not live in fear of deportation, and this is the fastest way to say so to the offices that can act.

Act now!

Thank the members of Congress who introduced this bill

Share this Post

WHAT THE BILL DOES

The Afghanistan TPS Act, H.R. 9899, designates Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status, known as TPS, from the day it becomes law through July 1, 2029. That is the whole engine of the bill, and its power is in its simplicity. For the length of the designation, an Afghan national already in the United States could not be deported to Afghanistan, and could apply for authorization to work legally while here.

The bill exists because of a choice this administration made. In 2025 the Department of Homeland Security terminated Afghanistan’s TPS, stripping a protection that recognized the obvious, that you cannot safely return people to a regime that hunts former allies and erases women from public life. Layered on top of a travel ban that bars Afghan entry and a relocation pipeline the administration has deliberately slowed, the termination left tens of thousands of Afghans who are lawfully here staring at the exits. Congress is now moving to restore by statute what the executive branch took away by choice, and to set it beyond the reach of the next political whim.

Two Democrats and two Republicans introduced it together. Reps. Jason Crow, Sam Liccardo, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Don Bacon are the lead sponsors, and that bipartisan lineup is not decoration. It is the signal that keeping this promise was never supposed to be a partisan act, and it is the reason the bill can move. AfghanEvac is proud to endorse it.

Read our statement

HOW IT PROTECTS OUR ALLIES

Think about what a designation changes in an ordinary week for an Afghan family. Right now, every doctor’s appointment, every lease signing, and every school drop-off carries a low hum of fear that a status change or a knock at the door could send them back to the Taliban. TPS takes that specific weapon off the table for the length of the designation. It is protection from removal and a lawful way to work, which together are the difference between a family that can plan and a family that cannot.

The human stakes are not abstract. We have documented former Afghan security personnel murdered within days of returning to Afghanistan. These are people who wore a uniform beside American forces, who were promised safety in exchange for that service, and who are now told their protection was temporary in the cruelest sense of the word. TPS says the United States will not be the government that hands them back.

Be clear about what TPS is and what it is not. It is a floor, not a finish line. It does not grant a green card, it does not create a path to citizenship on its own, and it is not a substitute for the Special Immigrant Visas, or SIVs, and the permanent pathways these families earned through their service. What it does is stop the bleeding while the larger promise is kept. It buys time, protects work and dignity, and keeps families together and inside the system rather than pushed underground or onto a plane. For an ally living one policy reversal away from deportation, a floor is not a small thing. It is the ground to stand on.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The path is a cosponsorship fight, and it starts in the House. A bill with four bipartisan sponsors becomes a bill that leadership cannot ignore only when the cosponsor list grows long and loud. That is the work in front of us this month. Every added name, from either party, raises the cost of letting this stall and builds the record that carries it to a vote. This is where readers come in, because members count the messages from home, and a constituent asking their own representative to cosponsor is the single most effective thing you can do today.

The effort does not stop at one chamber. There is an effort underway to get a companion bill introduced in the Senate, so that protection can move on both sides of the Capitol at once. We will name the lead office and the timing here as soon as it is public. When that companion drops, the ask widens, and the message tool at afghanevac.org/afghanistan-tps already reaches all three of your offices, so you are ready.

TPS is one piece of a larger fight, and it belongs next to the durable fixes. The Enduring Welcome Act would protect the relocation pipeline itself, so that the promise does not lurch from crisis to crisis. TPS is the emergency brake. That is the road. We are pushing both, because our allies need the protection that stops a deportation tomorrow and the law that ends the uncertainty for good.

Five years after Kabul fell, the argument has not changed, and neither have we. America made a promise to the people who stood with its troops, and this week four members of Congress from both parties said plainly that we should not deport them. That is a choice, and this time it is the right one. Now it needs a coalition big enough to become law.

Go tell your members of Congress to cosponsor the Afghanistan TPS Act. The promise is not broken. It is unpaid, and this is how we pay it. We are focused. We are building. And we are not going anywhere.

Act today

There was ground-level work too, from a San Diego meeting with a state lawmaker and Hazara community leaders to a legal clinic in Riverside.

Here is what moved, and what this week demands.

• Protection Promised is out, the first in our Five Years On series of original reports, and today we pair it with a Practitioner’s Companion built for the courtroom.

• A rebuilt website and a new set of tools put the full record, the pathways, and the litigation in one place.

• The Dorcas win held, and a judge told the government it must keep processing Afghan cases.

• On the ground in San Diego with Assemblymember Chris Ward and Hazara leaders, and in Riverside alongside immigration attorney Spojmie Nasiri.

• Not only building but recognizing the moment. ICE officers killed two men in a week during traffic stops, and after a brief pause, the President ordered the traffic stops to continue.

Start with the ways you can take action, then read on.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Read and share Protection Promised, and get the Companion to counsel. Send Protection Promised and its new Practitioner’s Companion to any attorney with an Afghan client, and point them to The Ledger, V-PRIC, and the litigation tracker.

• Comment on the proposed EAD rule, and add your organization’s name. We have launched a new effort with a sign-on and a ready-to-file draft organizational comment. Organizations can sign on today! The comment deadline is August 4.

• Register for the AfghanEvac Tools Demonstration. Join us Tuesday, July 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific for a live walkthrough of the rebuilt website and the new tools, including the Ledger, V-PRIC, the litigation tracker, the Enduring Welcome page, and the Practitioner's Companion. Register today.

• Register for the Global Alliance Update. Join the August 12 virtual briefing with Local Staff International, where we will release The Allied Ledger and new Guidelines for the Rights and Protection of Local Staff. Sign up at afghanevac.org/global-alliance-update.

PROTECTION PROMISED: THE RECORD, BUILT FOR THE COURTROOM

For four years, Afghan allies have been fighting a lie, that they were never properly vetted. Last week, we handed every attorney defending them the receipts. On July 15, we launched Protection Promised, the first in our series of original reports marking the fifth anniversary of the fall of Kabul. Subtitled America’s Afghan Allies, from Welcome to Removal, it documents what the United States promised its wartime allies, what it built to keep that promise, and what it has dismantled since January 2025.

Read it today

This is not a briefing paper. It is a fully sourced evidentiary record, assembled so that counsel and plaintiffs can file it in asylum and immigration proceedings, and in any other litigation where it helps. In one place, it lays out the specific commitments the government made across two administrations, in its own words and documents; how Afghan evacuees and Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) recipients were actually screened and vetted, drawn from the government’s own records rather than the political narrative; and what that record establishes for Afghans defending their status today.

Here is why it matters. When an Afghan father stands in an immigration courtroom in Texas and a judge asks who this man is, the answer should not depend on a headline. It should rest on the government’s own record of the promise it made and the vetting it performed. Protection Promised puts that record in the room.

Today, with this update, we are releasing its companion. The Practitioner’s Companion, subtitled Relief and Legal Standards for Afghan Nationals in U.S. Immigration Court, turns the record into legal argument. Where Protection Promised assembles the evidence, the Companion maps it onto the governing standards for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture, and walks counsel through the procedural traps that decide real cases, including the one-year asylum filing deadline. It was written by Jeremiah Johnson, an AfghanEvac team member with 23 years of experience as an immigration attorney, including 8 years as an immigration judge and time as an asylum officer with the Department of Homeland Security. Read one for the evidence, and the other for how to use it.

Get the Companion

This is the first of several reports coming in the weeks ahead. If you are an attorney, use them. If you know an attorney, send them along. Five years on, the promise is still ours to keep, and now the evidence, along with the roadmap for using it, is in everyone’s hands.

WE REBUILT THE WEBSITE INTO AN ARSENAL

Protection Promised did not arrive alone.

Our website has been completely rebuilt to equip allies and all those who stand with them with the resources, tools, and information they need today, and with a historical record of what got us here, to prepare us for what’s next.

The Ledger is the running record of America’s promise to its Afghan wartime allies, a searchable archive of more than 316 primary-source government documents from the United States and 34 allied nations, plus reports from non-governmental partners, the litigation, and the Afghanistan War Commission record. It is also where the Five Years On special reports live, starting with Protection Promised.

V-PRIC, the Visa Pathways and Relocation Information Center, is a sourced, continuously verified guide to U.S. visa categories and resettlement options across 197 countries, with a Find My Pathway assistant that answers questions in more than 40 languages.

Our new litigation tracker follows the active cases that decide whether the pipeline moves.

Our Enduring Welcome page lays out, in plain terms, where the relocation program stands.

Our updated Resources page pulls the help families, advocates, attorneys, and journalists actually need into one current, navigable hub.

And our refreshed Policy page lays out the full agenda, organized by agency and by bill, from the Enduring Welcome Act to the Afghan Adjustment Act, with section-by-section breakdowns and clear ways to engage.

Check out the updated site

Why it matters: Advocacy fails when the facts are scattered and the tools are hard to find. A rebuilt, searchable home for the record, the pathways, and the litigation means an attorney, a caseworker, or a stranded family can find what they need in one place, on their own time.

JOIN US TUESDAY FOR A LIVE WALKTHROUGH

On Tuesday, July 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific, we are hosting a live tools demonstration for advocates, attorneys, caseworkers, journalists, and anyone who wants to see how the rebuilt afghanevac.org works in practice. We will walk through the Ledger, V-PRIC, the litigation tracker, the Enduring Welcome page, Protection Promised, and the Practitioner’s Companion. Bring your questions.

Sign up now

THE DORCAS WIN HELD, AND THE COURT TOLD THE GOVERNMENT TO KEEP PROCESSING

On July 15, Chief Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island denied the government’s emergency request to pause USCIS adjudications while its appeal moves forward, keeping in place a ruling won by the team at Democracy Forward. That means U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) must keep processing applications for Afghans and for nationals of the other countries swept into the travel ban, including pending green card, work permit, citizenship, and asylum cases. Some affected applicants have already started receiving decisions.

This win belongs to Democracy Forward. Congratulations to their litigation team, and our thanks. Their work is the reason USCIS is still deciding these cases today. It does not end the travel ban, it does not restart overseas refugee processing, and the government’s appeal continues. But the administration chose to try to freeze these cases twice, first by policy memo and then by emergency motion, and twice it has been told no. The proposed EAD rule is the next attempt to accomplish by regulation what the courts have blocked by litigation, which is exactly why the comment deadline on August 4 matters.

Visit our explainer

Why it matters: Every week USCIS keeps adjudicating is a week that Afghan families move closer to stability instead of deeper into limbo. Court orders only help if the government complies, so we will be watching.

THE UN CONDEMNS THE PURGE OF IMMIGRATION JUDGES

On July 16, two United Nations human rights experts, the Special Rapporteurs on the independence of judges and lawyers and on the human rights of migrants, condemned the mass removal of U.S. immigration judges and the politicization of the immigration courts. Since January 2025, at least 135 judges have been terminated, including 113 immigration judges, 13 assistant chief immigration judges, and 9 appellate judges, most without cause or individualized explanation. The data cited by the experts show that the removals were far from random. Of 78 removed judges with available data, 65 had higher-than-average asylum grant rates, and judges with backgrounds in immigrant defense or humanitarian work were removed at disproportionate rates. Only one judge appointed by a Democratic administration remains on the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Read this alongside the mass hearing dockets we have documented, where a single judge is handed 100 or more cases in a single morning, and the design is clear. The administration chose to strip out the judges most likely to grant protection, then flood the ones who remain. “Foreign nationals facing deportation to a threat of torture, persecution, or death must be able to present their case in front of an independent and impartial body,” the experts wrote. That is precisely the body being hollowed out.

Why it matters: Afghan allies defending their status do it in these courtrooms. When the government removes the judges most willing to grant asylum and buries the rest under mass dockets, an Afghan family’s day in court becomes a formality. It is why we brought Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge with 23 years practicing immigration law, onto our team, and why Protection Promised exists, to hand counsel a record that a fair judge can act on.

A SECRET COURT, SWITCHED ON FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THIRTY YEARS

On July 16, the federal government activated the Alien Terrorist Removal Court for the first time in its history. Created in 1996 and never once used, this court is built to deport people on classified evidence, shown to the judge in secret, that the accused never sees and cannot contest. Chief Judge Joan Ericksen issued the first order after a closed hearing. We do not know who the target is, what they are accused of, or what the government claims to hold against them, and under the rules of this court, we may never find out.

Why it matters: This is the machinery of secret deportation, switched on at the very moment the administration is branding vetted Afghan allies as security risks. A person cannot defend himself against evidence he is not allowed to see. For allies already smeared as unvetted, a court that runs on secret evidence is not a hypothetical, it is the next courtroom, and it is one more reason the sourced record we just published matters.

ICE KILLED TWO MEN, THEN THE PRESIDENT ORDERED THE STOPS TO CONTINUE

In the span of a week, ICE officers shot and killed two men during vehicle stops. On July 8 in Houston, officers hunting a different suspect stopped a white van and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a longtime homebuilder who had lived in the United States for 35 years, had no criminal record, and by his family’s account was close to obtaining legal status. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says he tried to ram an officer. His family says he was a construction crew owner who may have feared that men in unmarked cars had come to steal his tools. On July 13 in Biddeford, Maine, officers killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was not the target of their warrant, and left behind a sedan with four bullet holes in the windshield.

For a moment, the administration blinked. Secretary Mullin suspended most ICE vehicle stops nationwide, pending additional training. Then, on July 15, President Trump reversed the pause and ordered the stops to resume. Restraint lasted 24 hours. The DHS Inspector General and the Harris County District Attorney are now investigating the Houston killing.

Why it matters: This is the same enforcement machine that detained Nazeer Paktiawal, an Afghan Special Forces veteran, and left him dead in custody in under 24 hours. It is the reason Battle Buddies exists. When the government kills a man it was not even looking for, then cancels its own safety pause within 24 hours, it is telling every immigrant community, Afghan allies included, that restraint is optional. That is a choice, and it can be unmade.

IN SAN DIEGO WITH ASSEMBLYMEMBER CHRIS WARD AND HAZARA LEADERS

On July 14, we sat down in San Diego with California Assemblymember Chris Ward and leaders of the local Hazara community. The Hazara people have faced targeted persecution in Afghanistan for generations, and that danger did not end when the cameras left Kabul. The families building lives here carry the weight of relatives still hiding, still waiting, still at risk.

The conversation focused on what state and local leaders can do while the federal pathways stay choked: recognizing the specific threats the Hazara community faces, connecting families to resources, and standing with San Diego’s Afghan community as a matter of public record. Assemblymember Ward listened, made some commitments, and we left with a shared understanding of the path ahead. San Diego has long been one of the country’s most important landing places for Afghan allies, and local partnership is how a national promise gets kept on the ground.

IN RIVERSIDE FOR THE AFGHAN COMMUNITY LEGAL AND RESOURCE CLINIC

On Saturday, I spoke at the Afghan Community Legal and Resource Clinic in Riverside, a regional event hosted by the Afghan-American Community Organization and other partners serving Afghan families. I joined immigration attorney Spojmie Nasiri for a conversation about the shifting political and legal landscape, what families are seeing on the ground, and how the community can advocate for itself. The clinic gave families free access to legal consultations, community resources, and support services in one place.

Spojmie and I both emphasized repeatedly how important it is to ensure people have qualified immigration attorneys, not unlicensed or unqualified “immigration specialists.” helping them navigate their cases.

These events are the connective tissue of this work. Policy is decided in Washington, but it is lived in living rooms in Riverside, Roanoke, and Rochester. Showing up, telling the truth about where things stand, and pointing people to real help is how trust gets built and kept.

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH: STILL WAITING, AND NOW ON A CLOCK

Roughly 1,100 Afghans remain stranded at Camp As Sayliyah (CAS) in Qatar, most of them families, many of them already vetted and approved. Members of Congress recently met directly with residents in a virtual town hall and heard about children without schooling, inadequate medical care, and shelters improvised after missile debris fell near the camp during the year’s regional war. The administration has said the camp will shut down on September 30, but there remains no plan for the people stranded there. The danger is not theoretical or confined to the past: residents tell AfghanEvac that missiles are once again flying overhead, and they have shared video with us documenting the renewed attacks from Iran.

Why it matters: These are not strangers at the gate. They are people the United States already cleared, housed on a State Department platform, and promised safety. Approved families should not be living on a countdown clock in a camp the government is trying to close before it has delivered them anywhere safe. A closure without a destination is not a plan, it is an abandonment, and it can still be undone.

PLEASE STOP TRAVELING BACK TO AFGHANISTAN

The pressure to give up and go home is real, and more Afghans are making that choice. We understand the exhaustion behind it. We are asking you, please, not to. Last week, Nangyalai, a former member of the CIA-backed Khost Protection Force, was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Khost, roughly a week after he returned from the United States. He is not the only one. Human rights monitors and Afghan media have documented continuing killings of former Afghan security personnel across multiple provinces, despite the Taliban’s public promise of amnesty.

That promise is a lie, and it is being used against you. The administration points to the Afghans who go back as evidence that the country is safe enough to return people to. It is not. A man who survived the war and reached America was murdered within days of going home. If you can hold on, hold on. Do not let despair, or a false claim of safety, cost you your life.

BATTLE BUDDIES: SHE WALKED IN BESIDE HIM

Katie Estes did not have to think long about answering the call. A former Navy officer, she learned that an Afghan ally reaching the final stretch of his Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) journey needed a Battle Buddy to walk in beside him. He turned out to be a former airman in the Afghan Air Force, and a fellow Delta Air Lines employee in her own area.

Now a systems operations manager at Delta, Katie stood with him through every step of a USCIS appointment that ran the entire morning. “Having her there and walking in with me really boosted my confidence before the appointment,” he said. He saw the symmetry in their paths, both shaped by military service and both now at Delta, and added, “I truly appreciate the time she spent with me, and I want to thank her for her service as well.” Katie, who spent the morning learning his story and the life he has built here, felt the same. “I want to thank him for everything he’s done for both Afghanistan and America,” she said.

Why it matters: This is what the SIV program was built to do, to keep the promise we made and to give our allies room to put down roots. Katie and our ally crossed paths at exactly the right moment, and her presence turned a bureaucratic morning into reassurance. That is the whole idea behind Battle Buddies, and it is why the no-detention record holds wherever our volunteers show up. There are hundreds more stories waiting for someone to step into.

Sign up for Battle Buddies TODAY

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The Dorcas ruling

• U.S. Judge Strikes Down Four USCIS Policies Delaying Afghan Immigration Cases — Khaama Press

• RI federal judge denies Trump’s emergency stay request in asylum application freeze case — Rhode Island Current

The immigration courts

• USA: UN experts condemn arbitrary terminations of more than 100 immigration judges — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

• Justice Department activates untested court for ‘alien terrorist’ deportations — PBS News

• The Alien Terrorist Removal Court’s First Case — Just Security

The ICE shootings

• ICE shootings in Biddeford, Maine, and Houston spark outcry — CNN

• Trump overturns pause of ICE vehicle stops implemented after Maine, Texas shootings — CBS News

Camp As Sayliyah and Qatar

• Lawmakers meet with Afghans stranded at State Department camp in Qatar — KPBS

The price of a visa

• U.S. Weighs Bond of $100,000 for Some Green-Card Applicants Abroad — The Wall Street Journal

Inside Afghanistan

• Former Afghan security force member killed in Khost days after returning from the US — Afghanistan International

The refugee double standard

• Inside Trump’s scramble to get White South Africans to the US as refugees — CNN

• How Trump’s ‘white preference’ saw 7,727 SA ‘refugees’ enter US while resident immigrants sidelined — Daily Maverick

Nearly five years after Kabul fell, the people who stood with America are still waiting, and last week we chose to arm the fight rather than mourn the anniversary.

• A report a lawyer can file.

• A toolkit anyone can use.

• A court that told the government no.

None of that finishes the mission, but all of it moves it, and every piece of it exists because people refused to accept that the promise was already broken. The promise is not broken. It is unpaid, and a debt can still be paid.

We are building. We are focused. And we are not going anywhere.

Start with what you can do, then read on.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Watch Wednesday’s hearing on whether the USCIS adjudication pause returns. July 15, 2:00 PM ET / 1:00 PM CT / 11:00 AM PT.

• If you're an employer, resettlement agency, or legal services provider, circulate our Work Authorization Explainer. Too many employers still don't know that refugees and people granted asylum are already authorized to work.

• Comment on the proposed EAD rule before August 4. Docket USCIS-2026-0067. afghanevac.org/ead-rule-change

• Enroll in Battle Buddies or donate to keep a volunteer in the room at every hearing we can reach.

• Take V-PRIC for a spin. Ask our new AI enabled visa pathways tool about your situation or the situation of those you’re helping.

THREE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS HEAR DIRECTLY FROM CAS RESIDENTS

Rep. Scott Peters (Co-Chair of the Special Operations Forces Caucus) led a virtual town hall this past Saturday, joined by Rep. Lou Correa and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, putting three sitting members of Congress in live, direct conversation with residents of Camp As Sayliyah (CAS).

It was AfghanEvac’s second such session, after an April call with Sen. Blumenthal and Sen. Peter Welch. Residents described children who have not attended school in years, a camp clinic that cannot meet basic medical needs, and makeshift bunkers built after missile debris fell into housing areas earlier this year.

All three members spoke on the record. “I share my colleagues’ outrage and embarrassment that our country is not keeping our promises,” said Rep. Peters. “I have been absolutely riveted by these stories. They are heartbreaking, absolutely, frankly, repugnant to my sense of justice and fairness. I don’t recognize America in the denial of promises and the breaking of our word to these family members,” said Sen. Blumenthal, who committed to introducing a written demand in the Senate and recruiting cosigners. “We cannot break this promise to our fellow allies who fought alongside, who died alongside, American soldiers,” said Rep. Correa, who pledged to co-author legislation and support a public campaign to keep the issue in front of Congress. We will be sending this out to press this morning.

See our press release

Why it matters. The camp is still slated to close September 30th and little, if any, progress has been made to get these folks to safety. Hours after the town hall, missiles flying into Doha from Iran were intercepted above the camp.

Our CAS Explainer

We took Nazeer Paktiawal's case straight to Congress, and by Friday they answered

AfghanEvac hosted a virtual press conference this week with Naseer Paktiawal, Nazeer’s brother. Naseer and Shawn sat down together in Texas, surrounded by Afghans at Lucky’s restaurant, while Senator Richard Blumenthal and Representative Julie Johnson joined remotely and spoke on the record about the case. Nazeer served with U.S. Army Special Forces in Afghanistan, then sought asylum here. ICE detained him outside his Richardson, Texas home on March 13 as he got his six children ready for school, and he was dead within 24 hours.

Over 100 days later, his family, now including Naseer, who is helping raise all six of Nazeer’s children, still does not have the full facts.

By Friday, Blumenthal and Johnson followed through. They wrote directly to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, naming the specific person blocking release of the autopsy: Yousuf Khan, Assistant Field Office Director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in Dallas, and Mullin’s own subordinate.

Read the Congressional Letter

The Dallas County Criminal District Attorney’s office confirmed in a June 24 letter to the Texas Attorney General that it is withholding the autopsy specifically because Mr. Khan’s office objects, citing a pending federal investigation. Out of more than 50 deaths in ICE custody this administration, Nazeer’s is the first ruled an accident, and Naseer carried that fight to CNN’s Jake Tapper this week as well.

Why it matters. AfghanEvac is not waiting on DHS’s timeline. We are sharing this letter and keeping the story in front of Congress and the press until it is answered. We are doing this because highlighting the real human impact of these policies is a core priority for our organization.

Five months, no answer, and a response that cited the wrong program

On February 18, AfghanEvac wrote to Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth, then-Secretary Noem, and USCIS Director Edlow, asking for a written update on the long-overdue Comprehensive Review of Afghanistan Policy, an explanation for how the administration keeps changing policy while that review remains unfinished, and a meeting with the Afghan allies, veterans, and families living with the consequences. Rubio and Hegseth never responded, not once, in 141 days.

Read our Feb 18 letter

Director Edlow finally replied on July 9, on behalf of the entire Department of Homeland Security, offering no timeline, no explanation, and no meeting, and pointing us to a general inbox instead. His substantive defense rested on two men who entered the country in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, not Enduring Welcome, the stronger vetting system this administration has actually restricted, so citing them answers a question nobody asked.

Read Edlow's response

On July 10, AfghanEvac sent a second letter that did not let this go. It noted that Secretary Mullin personally attempted an unauthorized rescue mission into Afghanistan in 2021 and once called Afghan allies “abandoned” on his own Senate letterhead, that Secretary Rubio urged expanded evacuation for Afghan intelligence partners as a senator, and that Secretary Hegseth trained Afghan forces in Kabul for eight months. The letter also revealed that DHS’s own Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, the office built to catch someone radicalizing after arrival, lost roughly three-quarters of its staff in 2025, and that DHS cut $18.5 million in violence-prevention grants the same year.

Read our Response

Why it matters. AfghanEvac requested from Secretaries Rubio, Hegseth, and Mullin by July 31 a response in their own names, with a real timeline, a real meeting, and a real accounting of what DHS cut and why. None of this is an accident. It is a choice, and it is still theirs to unmake.

We lost Senator Lindsey Graham

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died this weekend at 71, after a brief and sudden illness. He deployed repeatedly to Iraq and Afghanistan as a senior legal advisor to the U.S. Air Force and earned a Bronze Star, and that firsthand experience made him one of the Senate’s most consistent advocates for the Afghans who stood beside American troops. He was the Republican lead on the Afghan Adjustment Act, he knew many of our allies by name, and he wore an AfghanEvac lapel pin at public appearances because he believed this was never supposed to be a partisan cause.

Our thoughts are with his family, his staff, and the people of South Carolina. We intend to finish what he considered unfinished.

Read our Statement

Pakistan’s mass-arrest order takes hold

Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior ordered every province and the Islamabad Capital Territory to begin arresting any Afghan national without a valid visa starting July 10, with district-level enforcement reports due back to Islamabad the next day. The crackdown is now underway. Nearly 270,000 Afghans have already been deported from Pakistan and Iran this year, according to UNHCR, and this directive removes any ambiguity about what happens next to those still there.

Why it matters. Afghan allies with pending SIV or refugee cases who are waiting inside Pakistan are not protected by their place in the pipeline. Under Secretary Blinken, the State Department pressed Islamabad directly on the treatment of pipeline Afghans. Under Secretary Rubio, it has not. That is a choice, and the people paying for it have nowhere else to wait.

Houston’s ICE shooting becomes a fight over who gets to investigate

An ICE officer fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father of three, during an enforcement operation in Houston on July 7. DHS says Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle and ignored commands; three men detained during the incident told an attorney that account is false, and that ICE agents were never in danger. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare says federal investigators are sidelining local officials from the probe. The officers involved were not wearing body cameras.

Why it matters. Afghan allies live inside the same enforcement system as everyone else. A shooting that federal investigators control from end to end, with no independent local review and no body camera footage, is the same structural problem behind Paktiawal’s case: the agency doing the enforcing is also the agency deciding what the public gets to know about it.

A federal judge calls the government’s case “frankly preposterous,” and Wednesday’s hearing decides whether Dorcas holds

It has been more than a month since the federal court in Rhode Island vacated the USCIS adjudication pause in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS. USCIS has complied, adjudications have resumed, and hundreds of previously frozen work permits and green cards have been approved. The government has appealed and asked the court to stay its own ruling while that appeal proceeds, which could let USCIS reinstate the pause immediately. The court hears arguments this Wednesday, July 15, at 2:00 PM ET.

Tune in to the hearing

The government’s case rests on a declaration citing national security concerns across ten countries, three of which, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Pakistan, were never covered by the underlying 39-country hold, and USCIS kept adjudicating those three the entire time. Nearly twenty federal courts have now ruled against these policies, most recently Judge Algenon Marbley of the Southern District of Ohio, who called the government’s national security justification “frankly preposterous” in a July 6 opinion ordering USCIS to resume processing and decide pending work-permit applications within thirty days.

Why it matters. Wednesday’s hearing determines whether a month of real relief keeps going or gets rolled back while the appeal plays out. Keep your comment on the EAD rule moving before August 4 regardless of how it goes.

Dorcas Explainer

Mega Masters, by the numbers

Immigration researcher Austin Kocher’s latest data release shows the Executive Office for Immigration Review scheduled just 25 “mega master” hearings, 100 or more people at once, in May. In June, that number jumped to 153. Judges assigned even one mega master this year have seen their average overall docket size double, from about 25 cases to 50.

Why it matters. This is not a scheduling quirk. It is a documented pattern of specific judges and courts being flooded to manufacture removal orders at scale, and Afghan cases move through the same overloaded dockets as everyone else’s.

Mega Masters Explainer

Battle Buddies

In Connecticut, an Afghan family had a master hearing on the calendar, the father’s memory of his own earlier ICE detention still fresh.

Diana McDonald, a first-time Battle Buddy and Army Afghanistan veteran, showed up for them. Diana and her husband, an Air Force veteran, had supported an Afghan family in the Washington, D.C. area during the fall of Kabul in 2021, a relationship that continues today, and Battle Buddies gave her a way to keep doing that work after moving to Connecticut. “I was touched in a warm, fuzzy American way seeing people from around the world wanting to be here,” she said. “We have our flaws, but seeing people lining up to be here was inspiring.” The family walked out of that courtroom knowing they were not alone.

Why it matters. Showing up for our allies is a continuation of the oath many Battle Buddies already swore. Our track record of 100 percent non-detentions when Battle Buddies are present remains unbroken. Be part of the next story, sign up today.

Become a Battle Buddy

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The Paktiawal Case

• An Afghan asylum-seeker died in ICE custody in North Texas. Here’s what to know — Fort Worth Star-Telegram

• Death of former Afghan ally while in ICE custody ruled an accident — Texas Tribune

• Dallas County blocks release of autopsy report of Afghan asylum seeker who died in ICE custody in March — Houston Public Media

• Former Afghan ally who died in ICE custody suffered an allergic reaction, death certificate says — Washington Times

• Afghan special forces veteran died in ICE custody after officers denied him an inhaler — Reason

• Certificate in ICE custody death contains obvious error, family denied full autopsy — Dallas Observer

ICE Enforcement Under Scrutiny

• ICE agent fatally shoots man in Houston during “targeted enforcement operation” — Houston Public Media

• Feds sideline Texas officials in probe into ICE shooting, district attorney says — Washington Post

• Men who saw deadly Houston shooting say ICE statement is false, attorney says — CNN

Immigration Courts and the USCIS Pause

• Data on “Mega Masters” Show EOIR is Targeting Individual Judges and Courts with a Flood of Hearings — Austin Kocher

• Federal Judge Orders USCIS to Restart Trump Immigration Freeze Cases — The Coffman Chronicle

• Trump immigration freeze hit by new federal court ruling — Newsweek

Pakistan and the Region

• Interior ministry issues directive to arrest Afghan nationals without valid visas from July 10 — Dawn

• Pakistan begins crackdown on Afghans without valid visas — Pajhwok Afghan News

The Passing of Senator Lindsey Graham

• Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Trump ally, dies at 71 — NPR

• Lindsey Graham, longtime South Carolina senator, dies at 71 — Washington Post

• Sen. Lindsey Graham dies at 71 after “brief and sudden illness” — NBC News

Three sitting members of Congress spent an hour this weekend listening to Camp As Sayliyah residents describe exactly what a broken promise sounds like, then put their names to a demand for Secretary Rubio.

A family has waited over 100 days to learn how a man who fought beside American Special Forces died in American custody, and two Cabinet secretaries went five months without answering a single letter about any of it.

This week we also lost one of the few people in either party who never needed convincing that any of this mattered. None of it is fate. All of it can be undone.

We are focused. We are relentless. And we are not going anywhere.

We launched V-PRIC so families can navigate a system Washington has made harder to understand.

We launched a Work Authorization Explainer so employers stop turning away people already authorized to work.

We continued pushing for answers in Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal’s death.

And while the Supreme Court reaffirmed birthright citizenship, more than 250,000 Afghan allies remain waiting for America to keep another constitutional promise: keeping its word.

Start with what you can do this week, then read on.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Write your representative about Camp As Sayliyah, now. Roughly 1,100 Afghan allies remain stranded at CAS in Qatar, and Qatar’s relocation deadline is September 2026. Tell your member of Congress that standalone legislation protecting CAS residents and restoring TPS for Afghanistan cannot wait for the NDAA timeline. afghanevac.org/cas-action.

• Read and share the Texas Monthly investigation into Nazeer Paktiawal’s death. New reporting on how he died in ICE custody and the questions his family is still waiting to have answered. Read it here.

  • Press are invited to a briefing Monday where we will break more news about the case.

• Share V-PRIC on social media. Our new Visa Pathways and Relocation Information Center offers tailored answers by case type in more than 40 languages, free and with no registration required. Post it and tag @afghanevac. Find it at pathways.afghanevac.org.

• If you work at a resettlement agency, in a legal services practice, or at a community organization serving Afghan allies, circulate our Work Authorization Explainer to your employer lists. Too many employers do not know that refugees and people granted asylum are already authorized to work. afghanevac.org/work.

• Read my Independence Day letter to the AfghanEvac family. Written for this coalition and our partners on the eve of America’s 250th.

• Comment on the EAD rule before August 4. File at afghanevac.org/ead-rule-change.

THE UPDATES

V-PRIC launches, a map for a system built to be a maze

This week AfghanEvac launched V-PRIC, the Visa Pathways and Relocation Information Center, a free, continuously verified map of every U.S. and global pathway still available to Afghans and their allies. It covers 124 U.S. visa and status classifications across 197 countries of resettlement and asylum, with more than 90 plain language glossary terms and 37 official U.S. and court forms, in more than 40 languages. It is live now at pathways.afghanevac.org. Every line is sourced to the Federal Register, published agency guidance, and UNHCR, and verified on a recurring schedule.

It works the way people actually need it to work. Tell it your situation, SIV, refugee, TPS, family reunification, parole, and more. Ask in your language. Get an answer matched to your case type, cited to the source. This was built for Afghans and their allies first, but it is useful to anyone navigating a U.S. or global immigration pathway, because the confusion this year has not stopped at one nationality.

We sent V-PRIC directly to the State Department officials whose decisions helped create the system it documents. SIV processing has stalled. Refugee admissions remain at historic lows. Entire nationalities are barred by travel restrictions. V-PRIC cannot change those policies, but it does make them transparent, documenting every remaining pathway and directing people toward qualified legal assistance instead of misinformation.

If officials are ready to work with us to improve these pathways, our door remains open. Until then, we will continue documenting every policy change, every closure, and every opportunity that still exists.

Why this matters. A government that cannot explain its own rules to the people trying to follow them has stopped administering a system and started running a maze on purpose. We built the map ourselves, and now the confusion is documented, dated, and impossible for State to claim ignorance of.

Visit V-PRIC

Employers do not know refugees and asylees can already work, and it is costing our allies jobs

Federal law is clear: refugees and people granted asylum are authorized to work immediately. Yet processing delays and confusion over employment documents have caused too many employers to reject applicants who are legally eligible to work.

This week we launched an explainer along with an open letter to employers explaining exactly what documents satisfy federal employment verification requirements. It is a practical solution to a problem affecting thousands of Afghan families today and we don’t need Washington to act to realize relief.

If you are a resettlement agency employee, work with refugees in your legal services practice, or work at a community organization serving this population, please circulate our explainer to your employer lists.

Why this matters. The federal government created the processing backlog. It did not create the employer confusion, and it certainly is not helping clear it up. That gap is one we can close ourselves, with a letter and a fact sheet, and we are not waiting on anyone’s permission to do it.

Work Authorization Explainer

The Supreme Court affirmed birthright citizenship, and the timing matters

On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara that children born in the United States are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment, striking down the administration’s executive order that sought to end birthright citizenship for children of parents unlawfully or temporarily present. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority. Four justices would have gone the other way.

As we said in our statement the day of the ruling, this should not have been a close question. For more than 150 years, the Citizenship Clause has guaranteed birthright citizenship to nearly every child born on American soil. For thousands of Afghan families rebuilding their lives in America, whether their parents are SIV holders or applicants, refugees, asylees, humanitarian parolees, or Temporary Protected Status holders, this ruling means their children born here remain protected by the Constitution regardless of what happens to the parents’ case.

That certainty matters, and so does the warning underneath it. A settled constitutional principle reached the Supreme Court at all, and four justices were prepared to narrow it. As our nation marks 250 years, this decision is a reminder of what those protections make possible, and a reminder that they hold only because people keep defending them.

Why this matters. While this ruling protects children born here, more than 250,000 Afghan allies remain stranded overseas because the legal pathways that would bring them home have been slowed, suspended, or closed. America’s promise to its allies has always been about more than legal status. It is about keeping our word, and our work continues until that word is honored.

A letter to the AfghanEvac family, on the eve of America’s 250th

On July 3, I wrote directly to this coalition, not as a press statement or testimony, but as one member of it to every other. The letter names what has actually happened this year. Enduring Welcome shut down. TPS for Afghans terminated. The CARE office gone. SIV and refugee processing frozen. Roughly 260,000 Afghans stuck in a pipeline our own government stopped moving. It does not soften any of that.

It also names what has not stopped. Over 250 organizations have stood inside this coalition, veterans groups beside resettlement agencies, evangelical churches beside mosques beside synagogues, Afghan Americans beside lifelong Iowans who had never met an Afghan before 2021. The letter closes with a direct word to Afghan allies reading it. They are not a case number and not a backlog. They are the reason this coalition exists. Read the full letter here.

Why this matters. This week’s fights, the tool we built, the letter we sent to employers, the news we are breaking Monday, all of it runs on the same fuel as this coalition. A promise made in wartime does not expire because the news cycle moved on. On the weekend America turns 250, that is the version of this country worth defending, and the one we are asking the rest of it to catch up to.

Texas Monthly investigates the death of Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, and Monday we break more

Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal served alongside U.S. Army Special Forces in Paktika province starting in 2005. He was a father of six in Richardson, Texas. On March 13, ICE agents took him outside his home as he left to drop his children at school. By 9:10 the next morning, he was dead at Parkland Hospital. The Dallas County medical examiner has still not released his complete autopsy, weeks after the office’s own 90-day window expired.

Texas Monthly published a new investigation this week, detailing his case and the questions his family is still waiting to have answered. ICE’s own detainee death report tried to recast him after the fact, citing a SNAP fraud accusation and a theft suspicion from the months before his death. Neither produced a conviction. What the report does not mention is that a Trump administration policy revoked Nazeer’s commercial driver’s license months earlier, taking away the job that supported his six children. His brother, Naseer Paktiawal, is now helping Nazeer’s widow raise all six of those children, in addition to his own. The oldest is 16 and the youngest is still a toddler.

Secretary Mullin told Rep. Julie Johnson at a hearing that DHS would produce a full investigation. It has not. Instead, DHS is trying to thwart the release of Nazeer’s autopsy. Senator Blumenthal, ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has said he is prepared to work with Chairman Ron Johnson to subpoena the records if Dallas County and DHS keep sitting on them. Press are invited to a briefing today at 2pm eastern, where we will share new documentation in this case.

Why this matters. A man who survived our war deserved to live. His family deserves the complete autopsy, not a smear campaign built on charges that never held up in court. This is not a partisan question. It is an accountability question, and on Monday we intend to move it forward with facts, not more waiting. It is precisely because of families like this, and stories like Nazeer's, that we can show how individual policies impact individual lives.

195 Afghans signed up for Sacramento, one day before America turned 250

One day before America’s 250th birthday, Afghan families, veterans, attorneys, faith leaders, congressional staff, and community organizations gathered in Sacramento to ask a simple question: what comes next?

More than 195 Sacramento-based Afghans registered, making it one of AfghanEvac’s largest community town halls of the year.

Of the those who signed up, 41 identified as Afghan family members and 37 as Afghan wartime allies or mission partners themselves. People signed up in English, Dari, and Pashto in roughly equal measure.

The questions people brought sorted into a clear set of themes.

• The status of pending cases. The largest groups represented were SIV cases, 37 combined between pending and Chief of Mission approved, USRAP P-1/P-2 referrals at 23, and family reunification cases under I-730 or I-130 at 19 combined.

• Whether and when USRAP P-1/P-2 processing will resume. Multiple families whose flights were scheduled and then cancelled by the January 2025 executive order are still waiting, in some cases years later, for the program to reopen.

• The uncertainty facing people still at Camp As Sayliyah. Several questions came directly from people asking, in their own words, why no one is hearing their voices from Qatar.

• Work authorization and EAD renewal delays, the same confusion our new employer letter is meant to resolve.

• Whether applying for asylum puts an existing green card or SIV status at risk, and how to protect status while a case is pending.

• Family members stuck in Afghanistan or Pakistan, including cases where a scheduled flight was cancelled and the family has waited years since.

• What legislative paths remain. Several Afghan community leaders asked directly what reforms AfghanEvac is watching now that the Afghan Adjustment Act has stalled.

None of this happens without the people who worked with us to set this up. Khatima Jafar at NorCal Resist ran point on logistics and security for both sessions. Sweeta Azimi, who works with the California Immigration Project and with AfghanEvac, helped pull the case questions and community outreach together. CAIR brought its network, its trust in the room, and the room itself. Aaron Jones carried the congressional coordination almost single handedly, and we are grateful for it. None of that counts the volunteers who set up chairs, translated, and stayed late.

For everyone who left with a question we could not answer on the spot, we have a two-page explainer available in English, Dari, and Pashto covering exactly what came up most, where every pathway stands today, how to protect against scams, and where to get legal help, a Battle Buddy, or a way to lead in your own community.

Help for Afghans Document

Why this matters. This weekend the country marks 250 years. The best version of that story is not a headline. It is 195 Afghan allies and their families who signed up, alongside the veterans, attorneys, congressional staff, and community organizers who stood with them on a Friday afternoon in Sacramento, one day before our country’s birthday, because a promise made in wartime is still a promise. That is the America worth defending, and it is the one we intend to keep building toward, one town hall at a time.

Members are legislating around CAS and the SIV program, and the door for more is still open

Rep. Jason Crow filed Amendment #1144 to the FY2027 NDAA, extending the Afghan SIV program by two years. We are grateful to him for putting this in front of the Armed Services Committee. The House Rules Committee did not select it for a floor vote when it adopted a structured rule for H.R. 8800 on June 30.

On the Senate side, Senator Shaheen’s Section 1088 would bar the Pentagon from using funds authorized by this bill to transfer Camp As Sayliyah residents to Afghanistan or a dangerous third country, and Senator Rounds’s Section 1080 would build a records preservation portal for Afghan allies whose service documentation was lost in the 2021 withdrawal. We are grateful to both senators for putting real legislative language behind this fight, and we want to be straightforward about what each provision does. Section 1088 would not currently protect anyone, because CAS operations are not funded through the DoD stream it restricts, and a congressional notification requirement is not the same as a barrier. Section 1080 remains the strongest Afghan-specific provision in either bill.

The House still has one motion to recommit available before final passage, and the House and Senate will need to reconcile their two different bills in conference regardless. Provisions that exist in only one chamber’s version are not guaranteed to survive that process, but they are not dead either, and conference is where the strongest version of any of these provisions could still end up in the bill that reaches the President’s desk.

Full analysis of what is in each bill is at afghanevac.org/2027-ndaa.

Why this matters. We are grateful to every member of Congress putting real legislative language behind this fight, across committees and across party lines. That work matters, and on its own it is not enough. As of now, Camp As Sayliyah closes in September. The NDAA will not be law until December. A program extension and a funding restriction that does not touch the money keeping CAS running would not close that gap even if both survive conference.

We need bipartisan, standalone legislation that restores TPS for Afghanistan and actually protects the people at CAS, introduced now, not on the NDAA’s timeline.

A national surge in ICE arrests, this time with fewer eyes watching

Federal immigration officials arrested more than 10,000 people in a five day stretch after the White House pushed enforcement toward a target of 2,000 arrests a day, roughly double the earlier pace this year. Unlike previous surges in Minnesota, Chicago, and Los Angeles, this one has come with no location, no announcement, and no publicity campaign from DHS. More than 63,000 people are now in ICE custody. A separate Deportation Data Project analysis of the first fourteen months of this term shows Virginia up 390 percent and Texas at 99,255 arrests, up 180 percent, with double and triple digit increases across nearly every state tracked.

Every increase in immigration enforcement increases the likelihood that Afghan allies with pending cases, mixed-status families, or unresolved paperwork will be caught in the same system.

Why this matters. Afghan allies live inside this dragnet the same as everyone else, and the courthouse arrest ruling we celebrated two weeks ago covers one narrow slice of how ICE operates, not the whole machine. A surge with no ceiling and no announcement is a choice about how much of the country the administration is willing to put in a cell, and it can be unmade the same way it was made.

Pakistan strikes inside Afghanistan, and a deportation directive still looms

Pakistan carried out airstrikes inside Afghanistan on June 29 in response to militant attacks the day before. Afghan officials report at least 36 civilians killed and more than 160 wounded. Pakistan says the strikes hit fighters, not civilians. The unverified June 28 directive we flagged last week, reportedly ordering the arrest of any Afghan in Pakistan without a valid visa starting July 10, has still not been confirmed or withdrawn by any government source, though members of our own community are already treating it as real and organizing around it.

Why this matters. Afghans in Pakistan are caught between a military escalation and a possible mass arrest order, in a country the United States has largely stopped pressing on their behalf. Under Secretary Blinken, State engaged Islamabad directly on the treatment of pipeline Afghans. Under Secretary Rubio, it has not. That is a choice, not a fact of geography, and the people paying for it are allies with nowhere else to wait.

Dorcas back in court July 8, and a fourth circuit pushes back on ICE detention

On June 5, a federal judge struck down four USCIS policies that had frozen or delayed immigration benefits for Afghans and nationals of dozens of other countries. The government asked for an emergency stay. The hearing is set for Wednesday, July 8. Separately, a fourth federal appeals court has now rejected an ICE mass detention policy, adding to a growing stack of rulings against the administration’s detention practices.

We are hearing directly from advocates, attorneys, and impacted people themselves that this ruling is already moving cases. Asylum grants, green card approvals, and EAD issuances tied to the four vacated policies are coming through for people whose cases had been frozen with no movement at all. We do not have a scale yet, and it is slow, but it is real, and it is happening in cases that had none of this before June 5.

Why this matters. This is the same administration now trying to accomplish through the EAD rule what these four policies did through memo. Watch what happens on the 8th, and keep your comment on the EAD rule moving regardless of the outcome. We are continuing to watch this case because of its far-reaching implications on many policies affecting our Afghan allies.

Battle Buddies, still undefeated

Battle Buddies continued to show up for our Afghan allies in Dallas this week. Maryn Taylor, a Pat Tillman Scholar who first heard about the program from other Tillman Scholars volunteering elsewhere, and her husband Steve, a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, answered the call for an Afghan family at their asylum master hearing. “Never having been an immigration hearing, I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Maryn said afterward. “I am proud of the way every person at the Dallas federal courthouse treated the family we accompanied with kindness and respect.”

Steve’s presence, and his service in the same country their family fled, gave the family reassurance through the hearing. Everyday Americans like the Taylors keep showing up for the people who stood with us. Our track record of 100 percent non-detentions when Battle Buddies are present remains unbroken.

Why this matters. A hearing is not just paperwork. For a family navigating a system built to be confusing, a familiar face in the room is the difference between fear and dignity. If you want to do what the Taylors did, sign up today.

Become a Battle Buddy

Coming This Week

• Press briefing on Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal

• July 8 Dorcas hearing

• Continued advocacy for Camp As Sayliyah

• EAD rule comment campaign

• Additional V-PRIC improvements

In the Press

• An Afghan Man Who Aided the U.S. Died in ICE Custody. His Family Is Waiting for Answers. -- Texas Monthly

• New ICE document sheds light on March death of Afghan asylum seeker -- Houston Public Media

• Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship on constitutional grounds -- NPR

• Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s rebuke of Trump on birthright citizenship -- CNN

• A fourth appeals court rejects ICE mass detention policy -- Politico

• Deportation Data Project analysis -- Associated Press

A man died and his family is still waiting for the truth. Employers continue turning away people who already have the legal right to work. Congress is beginning to act, but Camp As Sayliyah still lacks the protections its residents need. Across the country, Afghan families continue showing up, organizing, and refusing to give up.

We are focused.

We are growing.

And we are not going anywhere.

• A federal judge struck down ICE’s courthouse arrest policies across the entire country.

• New data revealed how immigration judges are being handed more than a hundred cases in a single morning to push removal orders through faster than anyone can defend against them.

• An Afghan ally died after less than a day in ICE custody, and the government ruled it an accident while refusing to release the autopsy.

• A scam is circulating that targets the very volunteers who stepped up to help Afghans.

• Women in Herat were arrested and then shot at for protesting.

• And the EU sat down with the Taliban.

We have a mixture of positive momentum and several reminders of just how much Afghans are being shut out of real protection options around the world.

Start with the ways you can take action, then read on.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Comment on the EAD rule before August 4. The administration is trying to do by regulation what the courts already struck down by memo. Public comments carry weight, and detailed, specific comments carry the most. File yours at https://afghanevac.org/ead-action

• Share the mega masters series. We have broken down what these mass hearing dockets are, how to prepare, and what to do if you miss a hearing. Read it and send it to anyone with a case at afghanevac.org/mega-masters, and amplify our three-part series across social.

• Join us in Sacramento on July 3. A town hall at 2:00 PM and a women and girls listening session at 5:00 PM, with NorCal Resist. RSVP at afghanevac.org/sac-town-hall. The address comes after you RSVP.

A FEDERAL JUDGE SHUTS DOWN ICE COURTHOUSE ARRESTS, NATIONWIDE

On June 24, a federal judge in California struck down the policies that turned immigration courthouses into ICE trapping grounds. In a 71-page ruling, U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts vacated ICE’s 2025 courthouse arrest policies and the waiver that let agents detain people for up to twelve hours without the usual safeguards. The ruling applies nationwide, and the court certified a class, which means the protection reaches everyone the policy targeted, not just the people who sued.

For more than a decade, across administrations of both parties, ICE reserved courthouse arrests for genuine high-risk cases. The 2021 policy narrowed it further, to national security threats. Then in May 2025 the administration tore that down and authorized agents to grab anyone they believed might show up to court. Judge Pitts found the government offered no sound reasoning for the change, describing a complete lack of decision-making behind a dramatic expansion of arrests. That is the legal core of it. The administration made a sweeping choice and could not explain why.

Why it matters

Afghan allies are in immigration court right now. They are showing up for asylum hearings, status check-ins, and the appointments the system requires of them. A policy that punishes people for obeying the law is not enforcement, it is a trap, and it teaches the most vulnerable people in the system that the safest thing they can do is disappear. This ruling pulls that trap up by the roots.

It is also not the finish line. The government is appealing, and a ruling means nothing until it is obeyed. We have watched this administration treat court orders as opening offers. Similar cases are still moving in Baltimore, Chicago, Minnesota, and New York. We will be watching, because compliance is always the next question. This is a real win. It is not a resolution.

AN AFGHAN ALLY DIED IN ICE CUSTODY, AND THE GOVERNMENT CALLS IT AN ACCIDENT

Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal served alongside U.S. Army Special Forces in Paktika province. He was a father of six living in Richardson, Texas. On March 13, ICE agents took him outside his home as he left to drop his children at school. Less than 24 hours later, he was dead.

The Dallas County medical examiner ruled it an accident. The autopsy still has not been released, and the 90-day window the office typically works within has come and gone.

There are significant developments underway in this case. We will have more to report soon.

Read our Fact Sheet

Why it matters

Nazeer’s death is not an isolated tragedy. A new report from Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, Dying in Detention, documents 52 deaths in ICE custody over the first 500 days of this administration, with the annual death rate up 140 percent over the prior year, even as oversight was dismantled. A man who survived our war deserved to live. His family deserves the autopsy. What are they hiding. Stay tuned.

Read the Report

TWO SUPREME COURT DECISIONS, BOTH BAD FOR AFGHANS

On June 25, the Supreme Court handed the administration two immigration wins, each by a 6-3 vote, each written by Justice Alito. Both reach Afghan allies, and not in the abstract.

In the first, Mullin v. Doe, the Court let the administration terminate Temporary Protected Status for Haiti and Syria, and went further. It held that courts cannot review whether the Secretary of Homeland Security followed the procedures Congress required before ending a country’s TPS. Read that again. Even an openly unlawful termination is now insulated from judicial review. Afghanistan’s TPS has already been terminated, and this ruling clears the path for the administration to lock in terminations elsewhere without a court ever asking whether it followed the law.

In the second, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court blessed the practice of turning away asylum seekers who have not physically set foot on U.S. soil, drawing a distinction between someone who “arrives in” the country and someone who “arrives at” the border. An officer can now block a person from stepping across the line and, by doing so, block the asylum claim before it can be made.

Why it matters

Afghan allies live inside both of these holdings. Some are in the United States on protections that can now be stripped with far less recourse than a week ago. Others are outside, waiting at borders and in third countries, in a system that already treats reaching American soil as the one thing standing between them and the law’s protection. Justice Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, a step the justices reserve for the cases they find most alarming.

Step back and the pattern is bigger than two rulings. Across the United States and around the world, the protections that shield refugees and asylum seekers are being narrowed in ways that break from international law. It is worth remembering why those protections exist. The modern refugee and asylum framework was built in the years after World War II, here and globally, because there had been no system to protect European Jews fleeing the Holocaust, and the world had watched what that absence cost. The Refugee Convention, the principle that you do not return people to persecution, the very idea of asylum as a legal right, all of it was a promise made over the bodies of people the world failed. Chipping away at it now, ruling by ruling and country by country, is not a technical adjustment. It is the slow unmaking of one of the few good things humanity built from its worst chapter.

THE DATA BEHIND THE MANUFACTURED REMOVAL ORDERS

Austin Kocher published the numbers this week, and they confirm what advocates have been seeing in courtrooms since May. Immigration judges are being assigned more than one hundred cases in a single morning. A judge in New York was handed 121 cases in one day. A judge in Baltimore got 120. A judge in Minneapolis who had never been assigned more than 73 was given over 100. Do the math on a three-hour morning and you get less than two minutes per case.

No one adjudicates a person’s future in under two minutes. That is the point. When people are not properly notified, miss a hearing they never knew about, and are ordered removed in absentia, the docket is not a court schedule. It is a machine for producing removal orders at scale.

Why it matters

This is the other half of the courthouse story. ICE used physical presence at courthouses to frighten people away from their own hearings. The mega masters dockets ensure that missing a hearing carries a permanent penalty. One mechanism just got struck down. The other is running at full speed. Afghan allies with pending cases are exposed to both.

Over the weekend we published a three-part series for anyone with a case of their own. It walks through how these hearings work and how to protect yourself. See the action items for links.

Read our Mega Masters Explainer

A WELCOME BAG FOR SOME, YEARS OF VETTING FOR OTHERS

The New York Times reported on June 23 what the United States government is preparing for white South African refugees arriving in the country. The welcome bags include an Android tablet, an American flag, a copy of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the administration’s 1776 Commission report, and PragerU materials, among them a children’s story that recasts Nelson Mandela and warns of reverse discrimination against white South Africans. That is what the government chose to put in the bag.

Afghan allies did not get a bag. They got years of vetting, repeated security screenings, biometric checks, and paperwork without end. Many are still waiting. Roughly 1,100 remain stranded in Qatar. More than 250,000 Afghan allies and family members are trapped in a system that has been slowed, restricted, or shut. Over 200,000 came through the most rigorous vetting on earth, the standard we were told protected the country.

Why it matters

This is a statement about who the government believes deserves welcome and who deserves suspicion. One group is handed a tablet and a flag on arrival. The other is told the vetting can never be thorough enough, the timeline can always be longer, and the door can always be narrower. As Shawn said in our statement on June 24, Afghan allies did not ask for gift bags. They asked America to keep its word. The contrast is not subtle, and we will not let it pass unremarked.

A SCAM IS TARGETING THE PEOPLE WHO HELPED

A fraudulent email is circulating that impersonates the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a part of the U.S. Treasury, and it is aimed at the community of volunteers who stepped up to help Afghans. The email claims the recipient is tied to a criminal investigation, threatens frozen assets and travel restrictions, and pressures the target to respond and pay. It is a fake. A redacted copy is below so you know what to look for.

FinCEN does not email the public to demand payment, freeze your accounts, threaten to put you on a no-fly list, or order you to prove your innocence. Any message that does any of those things is a scam, full stop. Do not call the number in the email. Do not reply. Do not send money or personal information.

Why it matters

The people behind this are exploiting the exact instinct that makes this community what it is, the willingness to take a problem seriously and respond. If you receive something like this, stop, do not engage, and report it. You can report fraud to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and to the Treasury Inspector General. Warn the people around you, especially anyone who may be newer to navigating U.S. systems and more likely to believe a threat dressed up as official.

A NEW ARREST DIRECTIVE OUT OF PAKISTAN

A document is circulating that appears to be a June 28 directive from Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior, ordering that any Afghan national found without a valid visa be arrested immediately starting July 10, with daily arrest reports to the Ministry beginning July 11. We have not independently verified it, and we are sharing it as something moving through the ether rather than as confirmed government policy. We flag it because it is entirely consistent with how Pakistan has treated Afghans, including our allies, under the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan. More than 146,000 Afghans have been deported from Pakistan this year alone, and police have been detaining people with valid visas alongside the undocumented for months.

Why it matters

Many of the Afghans exposed by a directive like this are people the United States promised to protect, allies waiting in Pakistan for relocation that the American government has slowed to a trickle. Engagement with Islamabad on their behalf is exactly the kind of diplomacy that can buy time and prevent returns. Under Secretary Blinken, the State Department pressed Pakistan directly on the treatment of Afghans in the pipeline. Under Secretary Rubio, the State Department has been unwilling to engage Pakistan on this in the same way. That is a factual change in posture, and the people who pay for it are the allies left without an advocate at the table. If this directive is real, the clock is already running. We are working to verify it, and we will report what we learn.

WOMEN ARRESTED IN HERAT, THEN SHOT AT FOR PROTESTING

Between June 6 and 7, Taliban authorities arrested at least 30 women in Herat for allegedly violating dress code rules, including requirements to wear a burka or chador with a face mask. The women were released on June 8. On June 9, when residents gathered in the Jibreil area of the city to protest the arrests, Taliban forces opened fire and beat people with sticks. At least one boy was killed, more were injured, and the UN is verifying reports of a second death.

Why it matters

UN Women noted that a woman’s detention in Afghanistan carries enormous stigma that can put her at risk of further violence and isolation inside her own family and community long after she is released. This is the country the United States and its partners keep treating as a place people can simply be returned to. It is not. What happened in Herat is what return looks like.

THE EU SAT DOWN WITH THE TALIBAN

On June 23, the European Union hosted a Taliban delegation in Brussels for talks on migration and the return of Afghan nationals whose asylum claims were rejected. The meeting drew sharp objection from inside the European Parliament. Rochelle García Hermida, a Spanish member who chairs the Parliament’s delegation for relations with Afghanistan, apologized on the floor, saying she was sorry the Parliament had not stopped the meeting, and that the talks risk handing the Taliban international legitimacy. Another member, Hannah Neumann, warned that hosting the Taliban in Brussels would legitimize a regime that systematically oppresses women.

Why it matters

The conversation in Brussels was about sending Afghans back and about who still counts as protected. When a government that fled its responsibilities starts treating durable protection as negotiable, people who were promised safety discover that the promise had an expiration date no one told them about. The Herat news and the Brussels news are the same story told from two ends. One government is doing the harm. Another is preparing to return people into it.

DORCAS GOES BACK TO COURT ON JULY 8

On June 5, a federal judge struck down four USCIS policies that had frozen or delayed immigration benefits for Afghans and nationals of dozens of other countries. The government has asked for an emergency stay of that ruling, and the hearing is set for July 8. We will be tracking it closely.

Why it matters

Watch what the administration does next, because it is already running a second play. The proposed EAD rule aims to accomplish through regulation exactly what those struck-down memos did through policy, restricting work authorization for parolees and others by rewriting the rules instead of issuing a memo a court can vacate. That is why the comment period matters.

CROW AND BERA PUSH NDAA AMENDMENTS

Representatives Jason Crow and Ami Bera are pushing amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act aimed at our allies, including a provision requiring the administration to report to Congress on the state of the SIV program and a provision extending the program. These are good things, and we support them.

Why it matters

We want to be straight about what these amendments do and do not do. Neither would deliver immediate relief to the allies waiting right now. We support the reporting provision without reservation, because at this point we have no reliable picture of what this administration has done to the SIV program from the inside, and Congress is owed that accounting. On the extension, our honest read is that most people who need to apply have already applied. We support extending the program anyway, precisely because the administration has been so opaque that we cannot rule out that people have been wrongly shut out. When the government refuses to show its work, keeping the door open is the responsible call. We are grateful to Representatives Crow and Bera for continuing to push.

THE AFGHANISTAN WAR COMMISSION WANTS YOUR STORY

The Afghanistan War Commission is collecting firsthand accounts from people who took part in the war, humanitarian, or withdrawal efforts in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. They are asking for anecdotes, unresolved questions, accounts of powerful moments, and reflections on the war’s impact. Sharing these experiences is often painful, and the Commission says it reads every submission in that spirit. The accounts inform their research and analysis, some will be quoted in the final report, and where an in-depth interview would fill a gap, they may reach out directly. This is a rare chance for the people who lived the twenty years of war, from civilians to government officials to members of the US, NATO, and Afghan militaries, to put their stories into the official US accounting of it.

There are three ways to share, depending on who you are.

• Afghans. For Afghans who lived through the war, served, or worked alongside coalition forces, civilian or military. afghanistanwarcommission.senate.gov/afghans

• Veterans. For US and coalition veterans who served in Afghanistan over the two decades of war. afghanistanwarcommission.senate.gov/veterans

• Foreign policy and national security professionals. For diplomats, officials, and the civilians who took part in the relocation and evacuation efforts. afghanistanwarcommission.senate.gov/foreign-policy-and-national-security-professionals

Why it matters

The official record of this war is being written right now. Who tells it, and what gets left out, will shape how the country remembers what happened and what it owes the people who were there. If you lived it, your account belongs in that record. Silence cedes the story to the people with the most reason to sanitize it.

WELCOME, JEREMIAH JOHNSON

AfghanEvac is glad to welcome Jeremiah Johnson to the team as Senior Adviser. Jeremiah is an immigration and refugee law and policy expert whose career spans four administrations. He has served as an Immigration Judge with the Department of Justice and as an Asylum Officer with the Department of Homeland Security, and before that he practiced immigration law representing migrants and asylum seekers before the agencies and the federal courts. He is Counselor at Law at Johnson Law and Consulting, and he serves as Executive Vice President of the National Association of Immigration Judges. He has represented Human Rights Advocates before United Nations bodies and has met firsthand with refugees, officials, and humanitarians around the world.

In a week defined by courthouse arrests, mass hearing dockets, and a Supreme Court narrowing the law from the top, having someone of Jeremiah’s depth inside the tent matters. He knows this system from the bench, from the asylum office, and from the other side of the table. He is exactly the kind of person this fight needs.

Read Jeremiah's Bio

CALLING LAWYERS, WE HAVE A NEW LIST FOR YOU

We have launched a lawyers list. If you are an immigration attorney, or a lawyer in any other field who cares about these issues and wants to help, we want you on it. The legal fights ahead are only getting bigger, from courthouse arrests to the mass hearing dockets to the cases of people like Nazeer Paktiawal, and we are building the bench to meet them.

Sign up today and share it with every attorney you know who might answer the call.

Lawyers - Sign up

COMING TO SACRAMENTO ON JULY 3

We are coming to Sacramento on Friday, July 3 for two events, hosted with our partners at NorCal Resist. A town hall at 2:00 PM, and a women and girls listening session at 5:00 PM.

The first is a town hall open to the broader Afghan community. We will answer questions, hear what people are facing, and carry those voices back into Congress, the press, and the rooms where decisions get made. RSVP at afghanevac.org/sac-town-hall. For security reasons, the address is provided only after you RSVP.

The second is a women and girls listening session at 5:00 PM. After everything happening to women in Afghanistan right now, and everything our community is carrying here, this conversation matters more than ever. If you are an Afghan woman or girl and want to be part of it, join our Women and Girls engagement list at afghanevac.org/women-and-girls. This list is for women and girls only.

Want us to come to your community next? Sign up at afghanevac.org/town-hall. The more interest we see from a region, the faster we can build a visit around it.

IN THE NEWS

Stories from the past week.

The refugee double standard

• A Look Inside the Welcome Bags Planned for White South African Refugees -- The New York Times

• Refugees Question Trump Admin’s Welcome Gifts for ‘Favored’ South Africans -- Newsweek

Courthouse arrests

• Federal judge rules ICE can’t make arrests at immigration courthouses -- Courthouse News

The Supreme Court

• Supreme Court allows Trump to strip TPS, turn away asylum seekers arriving at the border in pair of new immigration rulings -- American Immigration Council

• Supreme Court gives Trump major wins on two immigration cases -- CNN

Death in ICE custody

• Dying in Detention, rising deaths in an expanding US immigration detention system -- Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch

• Trump Taps Former Oklahoma Trooper as New ICE Director -- The New York Times

The mass hearing dockets

• Mega Masters, the data behind the mass hearing dockets -- Austin Kocher

Europe and the Taliban

• Afghan Taliban hold first, closed-door talks with EU on deportations -- NPR

• EU lawmaker apologizes to Afghans over Brussels talks with Taliban -- Amu TV

• EU to hold migration meeting with Taliban officials in Brussels -- Al Jazeera

Inside Afghanistan

• Afghanistan’s Shia community marks Ashura under heightened Taliban restrictions -- Amu TV

A court told this administration it cannot turn the place people go to follow the law into the place they get taken away. That happened because people refused to accept that a trap was just how things are now.

The same refusal is what stands between Nazeer's family and a sealed file, between an Afghan ally and a two-minute hearing, between a promise made and a promise abandoned.

From a courthouse in California to a hearing room in Washington to a negotiating table in Brussels, the protections built for people fleeing danger are being tested all at once, and the people testing them are counting on us to look away.

None of it is fate. All of it is a choice, and choices can be unmade.

We are furious. We are focused. And we are not going anywhere.

UNHCR reported that global displacement fell for the first time in a decade, and the honest reading is that Afghans were forced home in record numbers while the lawful path that could have caught them collapsed, with the United States leading the retreat.

Congress advanced a defense bill that pairs a genuine win for Afghan allies with a Camp As Sayliyah protection that, as written, protects no one.

The administration, ordered by a court to restart the USCIS cases it had frozen, chose to fight the order instead.

And through all of it, our team carried the fight to San Diego, where the country's immigration attorneys gathered for the week.

Here is what happened, what it means, and what you can do about it.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Give if you can. Our work to support allies at Camp As Sayliyah, in Pakistan, and in the United States runs on people who refuse to look away.

  Donate today

• Stand with the families at Camp As Sayliyah. Read our 2027 NDAA analysis then send the message to your House member and both senators at afghanevac.org/cas-action. The site is slated to close September 30 and there is still no plan.

• Fight the EAD rule. The administration’s proposed rule threatens work authorization for Afghan parolees. The comment window closes August 4, 2026. Details and a comment guide at afghanevac.org/ead-rule-change.

• Share the record. UNHCR’s new data shows Afghans were the largest forced-return movement on earth last year. Share this update, tag your members of Congress, and use #StillWithUs and #AfghanEvac. Correcting the story is how we change it.

  Share

The world’s displacement numbers fell, because Afghans were forced home

UNHCR released its annual Global Trends report this week, and for the first time in a decade the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide fell, to 117.8 million. Read past the headline and the reason is not peace. It is return, and most of it was not a choice.

Afghans were the largest refugee return movement on earth in 2025. Roughly 2.9 million Afghans went back, including about 1.9 million refugees, and UNHCR assesses most of those returns as involuntary, forced by Iran and Pakistan tightening the screws rather than by anything getting safer in Afghanistan. From Iran alone, returns in July sometimes exceeded 40,000 people in a single day. The result is that the global Afghan refugee population dropped about 36 percent in one year, to roughly 3.7 million. That number falling is not good news. It is a measure of how many places will no longer hold them.

Now set that against the lawful alternative. Worldwide resettlement more than halved in 2025 to 81,800, the lowest level since 2011, and it reached only 3 percent of the people who needed it. The United States led the collapse with an 89 percent drop. Afghans were still the single largest nationality resettled, at 17,900, and even that was cut in half. The legal door closed hardest on the very people being pushed out the back.

State it plainly. The global picture improved on paper because Afghans lost their refuge, while the country that made them a promise led the retreat from the one orderly path home. This is the same coercion we fight at Camp As Sayliyah, in Pakistan, and in every frozen SIV case, now visible at the scale of millions.

Why it matters A return counted as a solution is not the same as a person arriving somewhere safe. The people in our pipeline are inside these numbers, and the data makes our argument for us. When the rest of the world is closing doors on Afghans, the case for America keeping the one promise it made gets stronger, not weaker.

Read the report

AfghanEvac showed up at AILA

The AfghanEvac team joined the American Immigration Lawyers Association at its annual AC26 conference in San Diego, June 17 to 20. With almost 3,000 immigration lawyers and legal professionals in attendance, we met with dozens of attorneys, members of AILA’s national committees, the South Asian Bar Association, and others whose work aligns with ours. Rabea, Jonathan, Hasina, Maryam, and many more spent the week in the rooms where these cases are actually carried.

We talked about closer collaboration with the AILA National Asylum and Refugee Committee, which includes many former leaders from USCIS. The areas we want to build out include capacity building, so more immigration lawyers can handle the legal questions specific to the Afghan community, and updated, integrated explainers and communications tailored to Afghans. We also connected with several new team members joining us from government, people who know the inside of USCIS, DHS, and the immigration courts. We will introduce them soon.

Battle Buddies was a hit. We brought the program to AILA and SABA members from across the country, attorneys came looking to sign up and to learn how it works, and we strengthened our ties to the immigration legal community nationwide. If you are a legal professional who wants to get more involved in AfghanEvac’s work, or you are looking for resources to better serve your Afghan clients, sign up for our lawyers list.

Get on our Lawyers List

Why it matters Policy fights are won by people, and the people in that room are the ones who turn a court ruling or a new explainer into a real outcome for an individual ally. Showing up, in person, is how the coalition holds.

And the lighter side of a hard week. My daughter Daphne appointed herself the convention’s donut fairy, handing out donuts to grateful attendees until staff shut her down for the unauthorized distribution of food. She is, we are told, weighing an appeal.

Mayor Gloria stood with us in San Diego

At AILA this week, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria gave AfghanEvac and our Battle Buddies program a shoutout in front of a room full of the attorneys who carry this fight in court. We are grateful, and we are proud that this work is rooted in our city.

San Diego has shown up before. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, San Diego was the only city in the country to include the Afghan Adjustment Act in its federal legislative platform, proposed by the Mayor and passed by the City Council. That is what local leadership looks like when it takes a promise seriously.

Why it matters

This fight is won in Washington, but it is carried in communities. When the leadership of a major American city stands with Afghan allies and the veterans who serve them, it tells every family still waiting that they are not invisible, and it tells Washington that the country has not moved on.

At the table on rebuilding USCIS

This week we co-hosted a listening session with the Niskanen Center’s State Capacity USCIS Project, the cross-partisan effort led by former USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou and former USCIS Deputy Chief of Staff Emilie Hyams to make the agency administer legal immigration fairly, efficiently, and on time.

We brought the Afghan community’s experience into the room at Kunduz Kabob in San Diego, the frozen cases, the backlogs, the work authorization gaps, and the human cost of a system where delay has become the rule rather than the exception.

We are grateful to Ur, Emilie, and their entire team for the work they are doing. The damage being done to USCIS right now is real, and it will take serious, clear-eyed people to repair it. When this nightmare has passed, the system will have to be rebuilt, and we are committed to helping do exactly that, alongside partners like this one.

Why it matters The same agency dysfunction we fight case by case is what this project is working to fix at the structural level. Afghan allies have lived nearly every failure mode USCIS has, so their experience belongs at the center of any serious blueprint to rebuild it. Reform that lasts has to be built with the people the system is failing, not around them.

On the defense bill, a real win and a protection that is not one

The Senate version of the FY2027 defense bill carries one genuine victory and one promise that, as written, is hollow.

The win is a records preservation program that would create and protect the files documenting who these Afghans are and what they did for the United States. That is real, and it matters long-term.

The hollow part is the Camp As Sayliyah language. As drafted, it restricts only Department of Defense funds, and the Department of Defense has not funded or operated Camp As Sayliyah since 2023. The State Department runs it and funds it. Language that ties the hands of the wrong agency protects no one. but there is a way forward, and that’s why we need you to act now.

Read our full analysis and our statement. Then demand standalone protection now at afghanevac.org/cas-action.

Read our NDAA Special Edition

The government is appealing the order that told USCIS to do its job

On June 5, a federal court in Rhode Island vacated four USCIS policies nationwide, including the Benefits Hold and the Global Asylum Hold, which had frozen green card, work permit, and naturalization applications for nationals of 39 travel-ban countries, Afghans among them. Final judgment came on June 11. On June 12, the government filed a notice of appeal to the First Circuit and is now moving to stay the ruling.

There has been no decision on that stay yet, so for now the policies remain vacated and USCIS should be adjudicating the cases it sat on for months. But the message in the government’s first move is plain. Told by a court to do its job, the administration’s instinct was to ask a higher court for permission to keep the freeze in place.

Why it matters Behind those four policies are Afghan allies who filed properly, paid their fees, completed biometrics, and then lost jobs and status while their cases sat untouched. The win is real and it is ours to defend. We are watching the stay docket closely.

Read our updated explainer

Work authorization is built into refugee and asylum status, and we are making that clear to employers

Refugee and asylum status carry the right to work as an incident of the status itself. A person granted asylum, and a person admitted as a refugee, is authorized to work in the United States. That does not change because an agency slow-walks a piece of paper. We are building a plain-language explainer for employers, so that hiring managers and small business owners are not left guessing, and so that qualified people are not turned away on the basis of confusion the government has every reason to encourage.

Why it matters This connects directly to the Rhode Island ruling and the EAD fight. When the administration freezes or complicates work authorization, it does not only punish applicants. It pushes them out of the workforce that needs them. Clarity is a form of defense.

Share our video here.

At the UN, a smaller room and a bigger fight

The UN convened its Consultations on Resettlement and Complementary Pathways in Geneva this month. The format was invite-only, refugees themselves had no real seat, and states declined to commit to resettlement as a durable solution. One of the concrete outcomes was a pledge to tell more stories.

Stories matter. They are not a substitute for places, funding, and political will.

Why it matters

When the institutions built to protect refugees start treating storytelling as the deliverable, the people who need actual resettlement are the ones left waiting.

In the news

Camp As Sayliyah

• ‘Cannot escape’: Afghan girl held at US military base in limbo amid Trump immigration policies -- ABC News

• Afghan Refugees in Qatar Face Uncertain Future as US Relocations Slow -- TOLOnews

The death of Nazeer Paktiawal and ICE custody

• Death rate in ICE immigrant detention centers more than doubles under Trump -- Reuters

• March death of Afghan asylum seeker who was in ICE custody ruled accidental by Dallas County -- KERA News

• New ICE document sheds light on March death of Afghan asylum seeker who was in federal custody -- Houston Public Media

• Family of Afghan war ally who died in ICE custody left without answers more than 90 days later -- KTVQ

The defense bill

• US Budget Bill Seeks to Block Transfer of Afghan Allies From Qatar to High-Risk Countries -- Khaama Press

Refugees, asylum, and the courts

• Ranking Member Shaheen, Representative Lieu Introduce World Refugee Day Resolution -- Senate Foreign Relations Committee

• Pacito v. Trump: court grants refugees’ motion to amend as the challenge to the refugee ban proceeds -- International Refugee Assistance Project

• Trump targeting immigrants from countries hit most by climate shocks -- The Guardian

• US in talks with Jamaica to send third-country migrants as rift widens in Caribbean -- Associated Press

The world will read this week’s numbers as people going home. We read them honestly.

Afghans were forced out, doors closed on every side, and the government that made a promise led the retreat from the one path it swore to keep open.

Nazeer Paktiawal is what that looks like up close, and the 1,100 at Camp As Sayliyah are what it looks like next.

None of this is fate. It is a chain of choices, made by people with names, and choices can be unmade.

So read the special edition, send the letter, and stay in this with us.

We are furious. We are focused. And we are not going anywhere.

Three months have passed since Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal died in ICE custody in Dallas, Texas. The Paktiawal family will be joining us on Tuesday for a press conference to share their experience and continue to demand accountability.

That is where last week ends and where this update begins.

In between, 83 members of Congress sent a letter demanding answers on Camp As Sayliyah, the government appealed the Dorcas ruling, the EU’s migration and asylum pact went into effect, and AfghanEvac traveled to Brazil to meet the Afghan community there.

Here is your rundown.

Action Items

• Comment on the proposed EAD rule changes. The administration is moving to strip work authorization from Afghan parolees. It takes five minutes. It matters.

  Act now

• Share The New York Times piece on the Tahiri family. It puts a face on the travel ban for an audience that needs to see it.

  Watch and Share

• Share this week’s update. Tag @AfghanEvac and use #StillWithUs and #AfghanEvac.

  Share

• Take our survey. Help us improve these weekly updates!

The Updates

83 Members of Congress. 651 Letters. 50 States.

On June 11, 83 members of the House sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding answers on the roughly 1,100 Afghan allies stranded at Camp As Sayliyah. The letter was co-led by Representative Jason Crow and Representative Don Bacon, two combat veterans, one Democrat and one Republican. It was authored with the support of No One Left Behind, and we are glad to lift up that work. The administration has until June 24 to respond.

This did not happen on its own. AfghanEvac’s network generated 651 constituent letters to congressional offices in all 50 states in direct support of this effort, on top of the 2,300 letters our network put in front of Secretary Rubio’s budget hearing offices last week. Americans in every corner of this country contacted their elected officials and demanded they stand up for Afghan allies. That is civic engagement working exactly as it should, and this week, it worked.

Letters Are Important. Letters Are Not Enough.

This letter is worth celebrating. And then we have to say this plainly. Congress has sent dozens of letters on behalf of Afghan allies. Bipartisan letters. Letters with specific demands and signatories. The letters have been excellent. What has not followed is legislation that materially changes anything. What has not followed is policy that opens a pathway, restores a program, or ends the limbo.

The bare minimum right now is not another letter.

It is action.

AfghanEvac is now working directly with congressional offices to introduce legislation that would provide real protections for Afghan allies, both inside the United States and abroad. We will have more to share on that work as it develops. In the meantime, every organization that cares about this issue should hold the line on the same standard. No ground on anything less than meaningful legislative or policy action that changes the lives of the people waiting.

A letter is a promise to do more. We are watching to see if that promise gets kept.

Camp As Sayliyah — The Five Countries

The Crow-Bacon letter asks six specific questions and demands a briefing by June 24. Among them: the status of third-country negotiations, the legal authority the administration would assert to compel relocation, and how many children are at CAS. That last one deserves a number. The answer is more than 460.

At last week’s hearings, Rubio was asked directly whether the administration still intended to send the Afghans to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country his own department classifies as Do Not Travel amid an active Ebola outbreak. He said the U.S. was in discussions with “multiple countries.” He did not name them.

The people at CAS are people who kept American troops alive. They are security personnel who fought alongside U.S. forces. Approximately 150 are immediate family members of active-duty American servicemembers. They cleared every vetting requirement asked of them. Shipping them to countries they have never been to, with no legal status and no support infrastructure, is not processing. It is abandonment with extra steps.

Read more

Afghans Among Those Deported to the Central African Republic

On June 12, a deportation flight landed in Bangui carrying at least two dozen people, including Afghans, Iranians, Armenians, and Iraqis. Among them was an Iranian Christian convert who fled religious persecution. The Central African Republic is plagued by armed conflict, the active presence of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, and an elevated regional Ebola risk.

This is not incidental. It is the mechanism.

Under both U.S. and international law, the government cannot send a person back to a country where they face persecution, torture, or death. The principle is called non-refoulement. It is codified in the Refugee Convention, the Convention Against Torture, and U.S. statute. The third-country deportation strategy exists to evade it. The administration cannot legally deport an Afghan back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, so it sends them to the Central African Republic instead. The destination changes. The result is the same. The legal protection survives on paper. The person does not.

This is the same administration that, days earlier, was reported to be considering sending Afghan allies from Camp As Sayliyah to countries with no resettlement infrastructure. It is not enforcement. It is exile, by design, around the law.

AfghanEvac and HIAS in Brazil

From June 8 to 11, AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver and HIAS President and CEO Beth Oppenheim traveled to Brazil. The trip included a town hall that drew more than 100 attendees, including leaders from Afghan-led organizations across the country.

Brazil has become a significant destination for Afghan allies cut off from U.S. pathways. The community there includes SIV applicants, USRAP cases, and families navigating Brazil’s humanitarian visa framework with limited support. The questions reflected what AfghanEvac hears everywhere. What is happening to my case? How do I keep my family safe? Is anyone in Washington still paying attention?

We met with UNHCR Brazil, Panahgah, Rede Sem Fronteiras, Pathways International, and others. It was incredibly important to learn from Afghans in Brazil what welcome looks like. Brazil has been supportive of resettlement in the past, and we want to keep that momentum going, while also reminding the world that the needs, voices, and promises of the Afghan community matter.

Dorcas Update — A Real Win, And the Routine Pushback

We said they would fight it. They are, and the court has held its ground.

To recap: on June 5, Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island vacated and set aside four unlawful policies that had been warehousing immigration benefit cases for Afghans and nationals of 38 other countries. The Global Asylum Hold, the Benefits Hold, the Comprehensive Re-Review policy, and the Country-Specific Factors Policy.

Here is what happened next.

On June 9, the government filed a motion asking Judge McConnell to enter judgment under Rule 54(b), so it could appeal, and at the same time asked the court to “clarify” the scope of the vacatur. That second piece was the government trying to narrow the order before it went up.

On June 11, Judge McConnell granted the Rule 54(b) motion and entered partial final judgment for the plaintiffs, but he rejected the government’s effort to muddy what June 5 already said. His order is worth reading in full. The plain-language portion includes this: court orders vacating and setting aside agency policies have immediate effect once they are issued. And then this: “To be perfectly clear, this means that the Challenged Policies are vacated, set aside, cancelled, annulled, revoked, and voided.” He closed the order with a sentence the government can read on its own: “There is no excuse this time; the Government has an obligation to immediately comply with this Order.”

On June 12, USCIS confirmed it is complying. The agency filed a status report and posted a public web alert, and the Deputy Director’s declaration states that internal guidance is being circulated and IT systems are being updated to remove the vacated policies. This is real-world compliance. It should help thousands of people retain durable status in the United States.

Now, about the appeal. The same day USCIS confirmed compliance, the government filed a Notice of Appeal to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case is now docketed as No. 26-1703.

We have heard from a lot of you who saw the appeal headline and felt the ground shift again. We want to be direct with you. This is normal. When the government loses a major case at the district court level, it appeals. That is what governments do. It is what this government will do every single time it loses, and it does not change the fact that the June 5 ruling is in effect today. The policies are vacated. USCIS is complying. The order stands.

The appeal proceeds on its own track. The first round of appellate filings is due June 26. We are watching for two things in particular. The first is a motion to stay the order, which is the only thing that would actually put the unlawful policies back in place while litigation continues. We do not currently expect one to succeed if it is filed, but we will tell you the moment it happens. The second is the date for argument. AfghanEvac will keep you updated at every step.

A court win is never the end of the fight. It is the beginning of the next one. This is a real win. Hold onto it.

A Note on Chief of Mission (COM) Approval and Interviews

If you have received COM approval on your SIV case, that is a real milestone. The Afghan SIV unit is processing because a federal court ordered it to. That matters.

You also need to understand what is happening at the interview stage.

Every Afghan SIV applicant going to a visa interview right now is being denied. Not because of anything in their case. They are being denied because Presidential Proclamation 10998 suspends visa issuance to Afghan nationals, and consular officers are bound by that suspension. The interview is happening. The visa is not. That is the design.

We also believe these denials are being used to artificially lower the number of COM-approved Afghans awaiting interviews and visas. When the travel ban is eventually rescinded, the administration will likely point to that smaller number to justify under-resourcing the program. They are building the case, right now, for fewer staff, fewer slots, and a smaller pipeline tomorrow. We are raising it with Congress.

A denial today is not just a denial today. It becomes part of your permanent immigration record. When the travel ban is eventually rescinded, the government may point to that prior denial as a reason to deny you again.

That is why immigration attorneys and organizations like the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) are advising Afghan SIV applicants to postpone interviews where possible. A delay you control is far better than a denial that follows you for the rest of your case. Do not walk into an interview right now without legal advice.

The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum Goes Into Effect

On June 12, the European Union’s Pact on Migration and Asylum went into effect across all 27 member states of the European Union, completing the bloc’s most significant overhaul of asylum policy in a generation.

The pact introduces mandatory border procedures, clarification on processing for asylum, and prioritization of certain countries for asylum status. Afghan nationals still have a high rate of successful asylum claims in the EU, but the issue really relates to getting to the EU, and the risk it poses for people who attempt it.

Traveling to the EU through pathways that are closing is extremely dangerous for everyone, and represents a desperate last resort for safety for many. As the United States closes pathways and ships allies to third countries with no infrastructure, Europe is closing the back doors that families have been forced to use because the front doors were locked. The doors are closing in both directions at once.

A Note on Those Stuck in Limbo in Pakistan

We see your messages. We read your emails. We need to be honest with you.

There is very little any organization can do right now to move individual cases in Pakistan. The pipeline is frozen by Executive Order 10163 (USRAP) and Presidential Proclamation 10998 (all). USRAP, SIV processing, humanitarian parole, all shut down or suspended. No amount of case-by-case advocacy changes that while the pipeline remains closed.

That is why our advocacy is focused where it can have the most impact, reopening the full pipeline. Letters to Congress. Comments on proposed rules. Constituent calls to senators. These are the things that build pressure to restart processing at scale. That is what would help the people in Pakistan, and that is what we are fighting for.

No One Left Behind has been providing direct financial support to Afghan SIV applicants in Pakistan. This support is specific to SIV cases. AfghanEvac is not a pathway into that support.

We recorded a video this week on the situation in Pakistan. Watch it. Share it.

EAD Rule — Comment Window Still Open

The comment window on the administration’s proposed rule to strip work authorization from Afghan parolees remains open. This is not a technical regulatory matter. It is a direct attack on the ability of Afghan allies in this country to support their families. If finalized, the rule would remove employment authorization from people who have no other pathway to work legally while they wait on cases that are not moving.

As of this morning, 299 comments have been submitted to the proposed rule from the AfghanEvac community, plus our own organizational comment. That is what a real campaign looks like. We need more. Every comment becomes part of the public record the administration is legally required to consider, and every one of them strengthens the case against the rule when it is challenged.

Submit your comment

If your organization has not submitted, do it this week.

For Afghan Friends and Allies — A Note on Travel

We need to say something directly to the Afghan community, and we need you to hear it with respect, solidarity, and urgency.

Please stop traveling to Afghanistan.

We know many of you have made the trip and returned safely. We are not dismissing that. But two separate forces are using those trips against you, and the combination is dangerous.

The first is the United States government. DHS is actively citing return travel to Afghanistan as evidence that conditions have improved enough to justify stripping Temporary Protected Status, denying asylum claims, and deporting Afghan nationals. It does not matter that you went for a funeral. It does not matter that you went to see a parent you had not seen in years. The administration is taking the fact of the trip and using it as a policy argument. Every return becomes a data point in an effort to remove the legal protections standing between Afghan allies and deportation. Do not hand them more.

The second is the Taliban. Mohammad Ali Atayi, an Afghan-born Australian citizen, was shot and killed in Jaghori district in Ghazni province after returning to Afghanistan for the first time in years. He is the latest in a series of unexplained killings reported across the country. These are not random. They are a pattern targeting Afghans with connections abroad. This is why the State Department maintains a Level 4: Do Not Travel advisory for Afghanistan. Level 4 is the highest warning issued. It means do not go.

The cruel irony is that the administration is citing return travel as proof Afghanistan is safe enough to send people back, while its own State Department maintains that no one should go there at all. Both things cannot be true. We know which one is.

We are asking for patience we know is already stretched thin. Stay where you are. Let us elevate the policy fights that need fighting. The legal tools are moving. The courts are listening. The coalition is not going anywhere.

You stood with us. We are standing with you.

Chutkan Enforcement Order — Still in Effect

The enforcement order in Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio remains in effect. Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order requires the State Department to meet monthly SIV processing benchmarks. The department has a documented record of non-compliance. If you have a pending SIV case with unexplained delays, document everything and contact a legal aid organization. IRAP remains lead counsel.

In the Press

• Democrats, Republicans ask Trump administration not to ship Afghan allies to unsafe countries — Reuters

• ‘Cannot escape’: Afghan girl held at US military base in limbo amid Trump immigration policies — ABC News

• America’s Afghan allies in limbo in Qatar — NBC News

• An Afghan Family Shattered by Trump’s Visa Ban — The New York Times

• Taliban forces open fire on rare protest sparked by women’s arrests in Herat — BBC

• Taliban forces in Afghanistan open fire on rare protest sparked by women’s arrests over dress code — CBS News

• ‘Grave concern’ after dozens of women arrested in Afghanistan for dress violations — UN News

• Australian-Afghan man killed during visit to Ghazni, sources say — Amu TV

• “No One Cares About Us Anymore”: How U.S. Aid Cuts Have Intensified the Crisis for Women and Girls in Afghanistan — Refugees International

• U.S. deports migrants from Afghanistan, Iran, other countries to violence-torn Central African Republic — CBS News

• Migrants Deported From US, Including an Iranian Woman, Arrive in Central African Republic — AP via U.S. News

• US-Central African Republic Deportation Agreement Escalates Attack on Immigrants and Puts Lives at Risk — Just Security

Three months. Six children without a father. More than 1,100 allies in Qatar with nowhere to go. Families in Pakistan watching a frozen pipeline. Families in Brazil and across the world searching for safety as legal pathways narrow. Allies already in the United States waiting on cases that still do not move.

This week, 83 members of Congress signed their names to a bipartisan demand for answers. Americans in all 50 states helped make that happen. Courts continued to push back against unlawful policies. AfghanEvac was in Brazil listening directly to Afghan families navigating uncertainty far from home. And on Tuesday, we will stand beside the Paktiawal family as they continue their search for accountability.

The obstacles remain enormous. But the coalition is growing. The courts are acting. Congress is paying attention. Afghan allies continue to have advocates in every corner of this fight.

Letters matter. Oversight matters. Public statements matter. But none of them are the destination.

The people waiting have done everything America asked of them. They served alongside our troops. They passed the vetting. They followed the rules. They kept their promises.

Now America must keep ours.

The ask is simple: do something real.

Legislation. Policy. Protection. A pathway forward.

The same day, DHS proposed to strip tens of thousands of Afghan parolees of their right to work.

Members of Congress named names, pressed cabinet secretaries, and put commitments on the record.

And in Texas, 160 Afghan allies showed up and asked the question we couldn’t fully answer: if Congress cares so much, why haven’t they introduced or passed meaningful legislation?

We’ll get to all of that, but first we need you to take action.

Action Items

• TODAY IS THE LAST DAY for your member of Congress to sign onto the Crow-Bacon letter on Camp As Sayliyah. Afghan allies in Qatar are running out of time. It takes 60 seconds and is the most important action you can take today. Email them and ask them to sign on now at afghanevac.org/cas-action

• Comment on the proposed DHS rule that would strip work authorization from Afghan parolees. The comment window closes August 4, 2026. Read our explainer at afghanevac.org/ead-rule-change and submit your comment at afghanevac.org/ead-action.

• Share the Dorcas decision explainer with your networks. A federal court struck down four unlawful USCIS policies this week. Tell people what it means and who won it. Tag @AfghanEvac and use #StillWithUS

• Donate to support this work. Showing up, the Texas town halls, the Hill engagement, the new EAD explainer — all of it is possible because of your support.

A Federal Court Strikes Down Four Unlawful USCIS Policies

On June 5, 2026, a federal district court issued a landmark ruling in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, striking down four USCIS policies that had frozen immigration benefit adjudications for Afghans and nationals of 38 other countries. Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. vacated the Global Asylum Hold, the Benefits Hold, the Comprehensive Re-Review policy, and the Country-Specific Factors Policy — all four policies, nationwide, effective immediately. The judge wrote that these policies threw the lives of countless immigrants into “indeterminate legal limbo,” found that USCIS had claimed authority it does not possess, and concluded that the agency had acted on “anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.” In legal terms: arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law.

The relief is nationwide. Vacatur means the policies are off the books, not merely paused. The administration will almost certainly appeal and may seek a stay pending that appeal. But as of this writing, USCIS is required to resume adjudicating cases that had been warehoused under these holds: green cards, work permits, asylum applications, naturalization, and more. For Afghan allies who have been waiting, in some cases for years, for benefit decisions withheld without legal authority, this ruling matters. We said these holds were unlawful. A federal court agreed.

When we circulated our Hill explainer on June 5, the first response arrived within 90 seconds. Senate Judiciary staff called it “huge.” House staff immediately asked whether the relief was nationwide. It is. Credit where it is due: Dorcas International and their litigation partners built this case. The Afghan allies and other immigrants who served as plaintiffs put their names on a lawsuit against the federal government while living inside a system that government controls. That took courage, and this ruling is theirs.

Read our Explainer

Why it matters. The administration will fight this ruling. Compliance is never automatic, and AfghanEvac will be tracking every deadline and every filing that follows. A court win is the beginning of a new battle, not the end of one. We have seen that before. We are ready for it again.

Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio: The Court Is Watching State This Month

In May 2026, Judge Tanya Chutkan found that the State Department had “woefully failed” to meet its obligations under the court-ordered Revised Adjudication Plan for SIV processing in Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio. She responded with binding monthly benchmarks.

This month, State is required to process at least 1,000 Chief of Mission applications. It must also report to plaintiffs the total number of Afghan class members who have been stuck at Step 4 of the adjudication plan for 120 days or more. Beginning in July, State must file a public notice on the court docket each month showing how many CoM applications it processed the prior month. If it misses a benchmark, it must explain why and identify concrete steps to comply. A joint status report on overall compliance is due August 28, 2026.

Judge Chutkan also ordered State to notify Afghan SIV applicants that being a class member in this case does not protect them from Presidential Proclamation 10998. Afghan allies who are scheduled for visa interviews should know: the court-ordered adjudication process means State must schedule and conduct your interview. It does not guarantee you will receive a visa or be admitted to the United States. The travel ban still applies.

Why it matters. The Chutkan enforcement order covers the SIV pipeline only. It does not address Camp As Sayliyah, refugee admissions, or parole. But it is one of the few places where the administration faces binding legal consequences for non-compliance, with a public reporting requirement and a judge who has already found them in violation. We are watching the June numbers. So is the court.

DHS Is Dismantling the Right to Work

This did not start on June 5. The administration has been eliminating Afghan allies’ legal right to work in stages, and both moves need to be understood together.

The first rule, Employment Authorization Reform for Asylum Applicants, was published February 23, 2026, with a comment period that closed April 24. That rule targeted asylum-based work authorization: extending the waiting period to apply from 180 days to a full year, stretching processing timelines from 30 to 180 days, and creating an automatic pause mechanism that stops new work permit applications entirely whenever USCIS asylum processing times exceed 180 days. DHS acknowledged in that rulemaking that current processing times already exceed that threshold, meaning the pause would likely trigger immediately upon implementation and could, by the agency’s own estimate, last between 14 and 173 years.

Review the old Explainer

On June 5, 2026, DHS published a second proposed rule that goes further and hits Afghan allies more directly. This rule targets the three specific EAD categories through which most Afghan allies currently work legally in the United States. Nearly every Afghan ally who arrived through Operation Allies Welcome entered on humanitarian parole, holding work authorization in the (c)(11) category — the category this rule targets most aggressively. Under the proposed rule, parolees must prove economic necessity for employment and demonstrate they warrant a favorable exercise of discretion, a standard USCIS can apply or deny with wide latitude. Work permits are capped at one year. Renewals require an E-Verify-participating employer — many Afghan allies work for small businesses that do not use E-Verify. An arrest is sufficient to create a presumptive disqualification. Not a conviction. Not a charge that resulted in prosecution. Not a guilty verdict. Dismissed charges, acquittals, and sealed records offer no protection. DHS’s own analysis excludes Operation Allies Welcome cases from its historical approval-rate averages because OAW approvals were so numerous they skewed the data upward. This rule was constructed knowing who it would hit.

If you came through CARE relocation after 2022 as an SIV or refugee, this rule should not directly impact you. Afghan allies with current work authorization should consult an immigration attorney about their specific situation.

Read our Explainer

AfghanEvac has made it easy to be heard. We have built a guided comment tool that walks you through submitting a formal public comment on this proposed rule, and it only takes a couple of minutes.

This is not a petition. It is a submission to a federal rulemaking docket, and DHS is legally required to read and respond to every substantive comment before it can finalize this rule. Your comment will be a part of the official record, so feel free to share your experience.

ACT NOW

We submitted AfghanEvac’s own organizational comment, laying out the legal, operational, and human consequences of this rule for Afghan allies specifically. You can read what we said and submit your own comment below.

View our Official Comment

The comment period closes August 4, 2026.

Why it matters. Two rules. One systematic effort to make it impossible for Afghan allies to support themselves while waiting for a government that invited them here to process their cases. This is a choice. It can be unmade. The comment period is not a formality. It is a legal mechanism that constrains the agency’s options and lays the groundwork for litigation. Use it.

Congress Shows Up: Three Days of Testimony

Ten days ago, AfghanEvac launched a campaign asking the Afghan community and their advocates to demand answers from Secretary Rubio and other administration officials during this week’s budget hearings. 2,250 letters went into congressional offices on Capitol Hill. Congress heard our community.

Last week brought three consecutive days of congressional hearings in which members of Congress named Afghan allies by name, pressed cabinet secretaries for answers, and put commitments on the record. We are grateful. And we are tracking every one of those commitments.

On day one, Senator Chris Coons raised Camp As Sayliyah during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Fiscal Year 2027 State Department Budget Hearing, pressing the administration on the situation facing Afghan allies still living at the transit camp in Qatar, where a September 2026 deadline looms and no credible relocation plan has been confirmed. He secured a commitment from the administration to work together toward a solution. We take that commitment seriously, and we will be back if it goes unmet. Representative Grace Meng raised CAS the same day in the House Appropriations Committee’s National Security and Related Programs Subcommittee Fiscal Year 2027 State Department Budget Hearing. Two members, two committees, one day, the same message. Thank you to both.

On day two, Representative Julie Johnson appeared in two separate hearings and did not pull her punches in either. In the House Homeland Security Committee Fiscal Year 2027 DHS Budget Hearing, she raised the death of Nazeer Paktiawal and pressed Secretary Mullin directly, securing a commitment to find out what happened to Nazeer and why he died in DHS custody. His brother, widow, and children were in our town hall in Dallas this week. They are not looking for sympathy. They want answers, and they want assurance that another Afghan family will not go through what they have endured. Secretary Mullin now has an opportunity to provide that. Representative Johnson then raised Paktiawal’s case again in the House Foreign Affairs Committee Fiscal Year 2027 State Department Budget Hearing, putting the same question directly to Secretary Rubio. That is sustained accountability. Thank you, Representative Johnson. Senator Coons also returned on day two, this time in the Senate Appropriations Committee’s State Department, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee Fiscal Year 2027 State Department Budget Hearing, pressing the broader situation of Afghans throughout the world, including those stranded in Pakistan, those still inside Afghanistan, and those in processing pipelines across the globe.

On day three, Representative Jason Crow came to the House Armed Services Committee Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act markup with an amendment that would have reopened the SIV application window and kept it open through December 2027. The amendment was withdrawn before a vote. We appreciate that Representative Crow fought to include it, and we will continue working with his office and others on the path forward.

Why it matters. 2,250 letters. Three days of hearings. Commitments secured on the record from two cabinet secretaries. This is what sustained community pressure looks like when it works. Hearings create a record. That record has to be enforced. We are doing that work.

This video is a full compilation of the questions / responses.

Action required today. Representatives Crow and Bacon are circulating a letter to their colleagues on Camp As Sayliyah. Today is the last day to contact your member of Congress and ask them to sign on. Every signature matters.

Ask your Representative to sign on

Texas: Town Halls, a Mosque, and a Ruling That Landed at the Right Moment

AfghanEvac was in Texas from June 3 through June 5. What we experienced across those three days was the full weight of this crisis in real time, and then, unexpectedly, one of the clearest signs yet that the legal strategy is working.

On June 3, we held a town hall in Fort Worth. More than 40 people attended. The questions were consistent: family reunification, stalled benefit adjudications, and the fear that relief was not coming. In the margins of that event, and in a separate meeting with resettlement agency staff from all five resettlement agencies serving the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we talked about Dorcas as the most promising avenue for near-term relief. We didn’t know when the ruling would come. We told people it was in the pipeline and that we believed it would matter.

On June 4, we were en route to the Dallas town hall at Abu Hanifa Mosque when the new DHS proposed rule on work authorization hit. Dozens of people were waiting for us. We had to explain what the rule meant in real time, to a room full of people who hold work permits in the exact category the rule targets. The EAD proposed rule would strip legal work authorization from Afghan humanitarian parolees, the largest group in that room.

The questions that followed were familiar because the challenges are familiar. Families asked about reunification. Applicants asked about stalled USCIS cases. Women whose husbands remain in detention described trying to keep their households together while navigating an increasingly uncertain immigration system. The frustration was palpable, but so was the determination to keep fighting for a future here.

After the mosque, we sat down with resettlement agency staff of Afghan heritage who shared with us the other side of the story. Having to serve a greater need even as funds are being drastically cut. Many of those staff are still waiting on their own family to arrive.

And then the question that has really stuck out, said plainly by a man in that room:

We did not have a satisfying answer. We sent that question to Capitol Hill the next morning and haven’t yet heard back.

We capped that evening by sharing a meal with executives from the resettlement agencies serving the DFW area. Dorcas came up again. Everyone in the room agreed it was the best legal avenue available. No one knew it would land the next day.

On June 5, we were visiting the George W. Bush Presidential Center — an extraordinary partner in this work — before flying back to San Diego, when the Dorcas ruling dropped.

Standing in President Bush’s Oval Office, we got word that Chief Judge McConnell had vacated all four unlawful USCIS policies, nationwide, effective immediately. It was the ruling we had been tracking for months. The people we had sat with in Fort Worth and Dallas — the families waiting on frozen benefit applications, the allies who feared losing their jobs, the resettlement staff who had been telling clients to hold on — they were the people this ruling was for.

Why it matters. The Texas trip was three days of community intelligence, coalition building, and direct accountability. What we heard in those rooms shapes what we say in Washington. We are grateful to the George W. Bush Presidential Center for their continued partnership, to Abu Hanifa Mosque for hosting us, and to everyone in Fort Worth and Dallas who showed up and told us the truth.

Battle Buddies

More than 1,000 veterans are signed up for Battle Buddies across the country and our 100% no-detention record holds when volunteers are present.

This week in Michigan, Representative Joe Tate — a Marine veteran of the war in Afghanistan, former NFL player, and former Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives — showed up as a registered Battle Buddies volunteer. That is who this program attracts. That is who stands with Afghan allies.

Sign up for Battle Buddies

What We Are Seeing: Mega-Master Calendar Hearings

After reporting on the expected rollout of mega-master, or “balloon docket,” hearings, we are now seeing implementation in immigration courts in Chicago, Indianapolis, and San Diego. These hearings schedule as many as 120 individuals before a single judge at the same time. Most respondents arrive without lawyers. In that environment, rights can be waived unintentionally, and the consequences can be severe and permanent.

At these hearings, respondents are being pressured to complete a form called the “Respondent’s Pleading Declaration.” Signing this form without understanding it could result in a judge finding you removable. If you receive a pleading declaration, you still have the right to due process and to fight your case with legal representation. For guidance on your rights, see the National Immigrant Justice Center’s guidelines.

If you have an upcoming immigration court date:

• Let us know you need a Battle Buddy.

• Check your case status daily at the EOIR website. You will not know your hearing is a mega-master until you arrive at court.

• Arrive on time. Respondents who arrive late are being treated as absent and issued deportation orders in absentia.

• Be prepared for long wait times.

• Seek legal representation before your hearing if at all possible.

For more on what to expect, see this resource from Immigrant Help NY. We will share updates as we receive more information.

A Note on Volunteer Standards and Community Safety

AfghanEvac’s work depends on trust. The Afghan community trusts us to show up with accurate information, no hidden agenda, and deep respect for who they are and where they are. That trust is fragile, and it is everyone’s responsibility to protect it.

We need to address something that happened at one of our Texas town halls. An individual who is not an AfghanEvac volunteer, not affiliated with our organization, and who has a known history of spreading misinformation in Afghan advocacy spaces attended uninvited and began providing “assistance” to community members. This is not the first time concerns have been raised about this individual in Afghan advocacy spaces. We are not naming him here because doing so would give him a platform he has not earned and create a public dispute that serves no one in this community. But we are not pretending this did not happen, and we are not pretending he is welcome.

This was not one of our volunteers. We are proud of the people who show up for this work.

The standard is not complicated. Show up with accurate information. Leave your agenda at the door. Treat every Afghan ally in the room with the dignity they are owed. Proselytizing in our spaces or in community spaces where we are guests, including mosques and cultural centers, is against our organizational ethics and will not be tolerated. If you cannot commit to that standard, this is not the right space for you.

If you see someone at an AfghanEvac event who is not part of our team and is sharing unverified information or behaving inconsistently with our values, find a staff member or organizer immediately.

Important Information for Afghan Allies in the United States and Their Advocates

Resettlement agencies have flagged something we need to share with the community who are already present in the United States.

The federal government is preparing a new outreach initiative that will specifically seek out Afghan allies in the United States who do not yet have durable immigration status and conduct outreach interviews.

We do not know exactly how or when this will happen. What we do know is that the initiative is being designed right now, that it is coming before the end of this fiscal year, and that it is being built specifically for this population in a way that departs significantly from how similar efforts have been conducted in the past.

We are not in a position to say this is malicious. We are in a position to say that in this environment, with this administration’s track record toward Afghan allies, any federal effort to identify and make contact with the most vulnerable people in the pipeline warrants extreme caution.

If someone contacts you about a new federal survey or outreach effort, you are not obligated to participate without understanding exactly what will be done with your information. Talk to a lawyer. Contact us.

We will share more guidance as it becomes available.

In the News

• A federal judge strikes down Trump administration immigration policy affecting 39 countries — Associated Press

• Judge blocks series of Trump policies halting immigration processing — The Hill

• US Judge Invalidates Trump Policies Targeting Immigrants From 39 Countries — Reuters

• Judge strikes down Trump policy that halted asylum decisions for 39 countries — PBS NewsHour

• Federal judge strikes down Trump immigration policy imposed after National Guard members shot in DC — WTOP

• HIAS Welcomes Court Ruling on USCIS Processing Ban — HIAS

• Capital Tonight Texas — Spectrum News

• Episode 143: Shawn VanDiver on Camp As Sayliyah Future, Legal Updates — The Afghanistan Project Podcast with Beth Bailey

This week brought both warning signs and reasons for optimism.

A federal court rejected unlawful policies that had frozen immigration benefits for thousands of people. At the same time, DHS proposed new restrictions that could make it harder for Afghan parolees to work and support their families. Congress secured commitments from administration officials, but many Afghan allies continue asking when oversight will become action.

Across Fort Worth and Dallas, Afghan allies showed up not because they wanted another meeting, but because they wanted answers. They wanted to know whether anyone was still paying attention. We told them the truth: the challenges are real, the road ahead will be difficult, and none of this will be solved quickly.

We also told them something else: This community remains engaged. The courts are listening. Advocates are showing up. Veterans are standing beside their wartime allies. And Afghan families continue demonstrating extraordinary resilience in the face of uncertainty.

That work continues next week, and the week after that. Thank you for being part of it.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies before Congress four times between June 2 and 3, and for the first time the members asking the questions will have a fulsome account of what has been done to America’s Afghan allies. We assembled that account with the country’s leading resettlement agencies and put it in front of every office that will hold a gavel.

The rest of the week filled in around that fight. A close Rubio aide was quietly promoted to a top White House post.

A bipartisan pair of House members opened a letter demanding answers on the roughly 1,100 Afghans still trapped in Qatar.

A hard SIV paperwork deadline lands Friday, June 5.

And in a federal courtroom, one ally was pulled back from the edge of deportation, a reminder of what happens when our people show up and refuse to let the paperwork win.

There is real work to do before tomorrow morning. Start here.

ACTION THIS WEEK

1. Tell your member of Congress to ask Rubio about Afghans
   Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies before four committees on June 2 and June 3. If your representative or senator sits on one of these committees, their staff has what they need to make Afghans part of the record.

   1. You can also read our Memo to Congressional Offices, the Questions Tipsheet we suggested for members, and the letter we led with the CEOs of the nation’s leading resettlement agencies on that same site.

2. Call, write, and post. Get your Representative on the bipartisan CAS letter

   Reps. Jason Crow and Don Bacon are leading a bipartisan letter pressing the State Department for answers on any plan to move the roughly 1,100 Afghans held at Camp As Sayliyah.

   1. This is a three-part push. Call your representative’s office, send the letter through our system, and post the ask so others in your district do the same. The deadline for offices to sign on is end of day Monday, June 8. Everything you need is at afghanevac.org/cas-action.

3. Plug into the programs that put people to work

   Advocacy from Washington matters, and so does the work happening in driveways, courtrooms, and living rooms across the country. Two programs make it real.

   1. Our Afghan Community Ambassadors Program trains and equips Afghan community members to lead advocacy in their own cities, and you can learn more and sign up at afghanevac.org/community-ambassadors.

   2. Battle Buddies pairs volunteers with allies who have to show up for immigration check-ins and court dates, and the program’s record of no detentions when a Battle Buddy is present still stands. Learn more at afghanevac.org/battle-buddies.

   3. You can also print our flyers and put them up where your community will see them, at go.afghanevac.org/flyers.

4. Fund the fight. This work runs on support from people who refuse to look away. Give at afghanevac.org/donate.

Your advocacy, on the map

We launched a new advocacy system this week, and it is already working. In less than one week, our members have taken more than 1,000 individual actions across 40 states. The tool lets you act on a letter or a campaign in a single click, and it lets us see where the energy is building and where it still needs a push. This is the first version, and we are going to keep improving it. The goal is simple. Make it easier for you to be heard, and easier for us to turn that into pressure where it counts.

A win worth naming

Good news is rare in this fight, so we are going to sit with it. This past week, an Afghan ally we will keep anonymous, a Special Immigrant Visa recipient and a lawful permanent resident, walked into a federal courtroom facing the loss of everything he had been promised. The government had thrown his status into question on a strained reading of the recommendation-letter rules that would have required something the law does not. He was placed in removal proceedings over it. In plain terms, an American green card holder was at risk of being deported to the Taliban.

He did not face it alone. Our AfghanEvac Battle Buddies team stood with him in court, the way they have shown up for allies across the country. His legal team did exceptional work. And the judge saw the denial for what it was, ruling completely in our ally’s favor and calling out the weakness of the government’s position. On the strength of that ruling, his attorneys have moved to end the deportation case entirely, and the government has ten days to respond. We are keeping his name and face out of this because his family in Afghanistan remains at risk, and that caution is the whole point.

This is what the work looks like on a good day. One ally, one courtroom, one bad interpretation rejected. It matters beyond this family, because the same flimsy theory is being used against others, and this shows it can be beaten. When we show up, when the lawyers are sharp, and when a judge reads the record, the machine does not always win. Hold onto that this week.

They shut it all down. Now Rubio has to sit in the chair

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to testify before four committees on June 2 and June 3, his first sustained appearances on the Hill since the scope of the collapse became undeniable. This week, we are making sure no member walks in unarmed.

Start with the number that says everything. The Department’s own SIV program update, released May 13, confirms zero Special Immigrant Visas issued to Afghan applicants since January 1, 2026. Of the 50,500 visas Congress authorized, 5,970 remain unused. Roughly 178,000 Afghans hold Chief of Mission approval and are waiting. The Department keeps conducting interviews. It is not issuing visas. A program that interviews people and then hands them nothing is not a program. It is a waiting room with no door.

The visas are only the start. A travel ban bars Afghans from entry. Temporary Protected Status has been terminated. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act stripped food assistance from entire categories of lawfully present people, and the chaos has been bad enough that even green-card-holding allies have been denied SNAP in some states. The May 27 refugee determination handed 10,000 slots to Afrikaners and named Afghans nowhere. Three Afghan refugees have been resettled this entire fiscal year. Three.

And roughly 1,100 Afghans are still trapped at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, sent there for final vetting and then left in place when the Secretary's Department froze the program around them. Around 800 are women and children. Roughly 150 are immediate family members of active-duty U.S. service members, the families of people serving in our military right now. They have been held in transit for more than a year, with no resettlement, no return, and no plan for their future. This is not a backlog. It is a population the Secretary is responsible for, abandoned in place.

Here is the part Congress needs to understand, because it is the whole argument. Almost none of this would be landing the way it does if Enduring Welcome had kept moving. Enduring Welcome brought allies here with durable status, the green cards and legal footing that shield a person from a benefits cut or a travel ban. The administration shut it off on day one and has spent every month since dismantling the machinery around it. The result is families waiting years for reunification, allies stranded overseas, and the cleanup dumped onto the nonprofits and volunteers who never should have had to carry it.

None of this is fate. It is a series of choices, and every one of them can be unmade. Judge Tanya Chutkan’s February 6 order requires the continued adjudication of Afghan cases, and the contrast between that order and a zero issuance rate is an oversight finding waiting to be made. We are asking members to convert every half-answer about review, consideration, or further study into a Question for the Record with a hard deadline, and to build the answers into FY27 report language. August marks five years since the fall of Kabul. The FY27 budget will tell the world whether the United States still believes a wartime promise is a promise to be kept.

Read our Memo

The letter, signed by AfghanEvac and the country’s leading resettlement agencies

On May 29, ahead of Secretary Rubio’s testimony, we sent a joint letter to congressional leadership and the relevant committee leaders. We did not send it alone. The chief executives of six of the country’s principal resettlement agencies signed it with us, HIAS, Church World Service, Global Refuge, World Relief, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and the Ethiopian Community Development Council. Seven organizations spanning faith traditions, humanitarian missions, and decades of resettlement work, agreeing on one thing without reservation. A promise made by Americans in wartime is a promise to be kept.

The letter puts the documented record in front of the members who will question the Secretary this week and asks them to require him to answer for it on the record. We wanted you to know it went out, and we want you to read it.

Read the Letter

The June 5 SIV document deadline lands this week

If you or someone you are helping has a pending Chief of Mission application in the Afghan SIV pipeline, this Friday, June 5, is the deadline to get every supporting document in. This is the State Department’s own cutoff. Any letter of recommendation, employment verification, or additional document the Department has requested for a pending COM application must be submitted by 11:59 on June 5, sent to AfghanSIVApplication@state.gov. The application window for new COM requests already closed on December 31, 2025, so this is the last structured opportunity to complete a file that is already in the system.

Two things people need to hear clearly, because the confusion around this is real.

1. This deadline is only for supporting documents on a pending COM application. It does not apply to visa processing steps after COM approval, and it does not change appeal rights. If a COM denial letter arrives, the deadline to appeal is 120 days from the date of that letter, even if that date falls after June 5.

2. And none of this is contradicted by the fact that the Department has stopped issuing visas. Processing and issuance are legally separate. Judge Chutkan’s order requires the former to continue, and a complete file is what protects an applicant’s place when issuance resumes.

Get the documents in. The recommendation-letter and verification rules are exactly where the government has been manufacturing denials, including in the case we describe above, so precision on dates and supervisor details is not a formality. It is the difference between a file that moves and a file that gets rejected. IRAP has published current practitioner resources for getting this right, and our team can help you find the door.

Learn more from IRAP

The same small circle now runs the Afghan file at both State and the White House

Days before Rubio sat down in front of Congress, the administration moved to consolidate his authority. Mike Needham, Rubio’s State Department Counselor and the director of his Policy Planning Staff, has been promoted to Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor, the move first reported by Axios on May 26. Needham is one of Rubio’s closest and longest-serving aides. He ran Rubio’s Senate office as chief of staff for six years, and before that he led Heritage Action for America. He replaces Robert Gabriel at the National Security Council. Because Rubio is also serving as acting National Security Advisor, Needham now sits directly beneath him on the White House side of the house, while continuing to work hand in glove with the building he just left. Dan Holler, Rubio’s chief of staff at State and another veteran of both the Senate office and Heritage Action, steps into Needham’s old role.

Here is why this matters to us specifically. Needham and Holler are not unfamiliar names on this issue. They are among the senior State officials AfghanEvac has written to directly (since January 2025) about the deteriorating conditions at Camp As Sayliyah, including our urgent letters this winter when missile debris was falling on the camp. The men who received those letters have never once responded to a message from us about Afghans, not one, and now they are being elevated rather than held to account.

That is the accountability record in one sentence. The same officials, the same unanswered inbox, more power, and still no principal-level meeting and no answers on the people stranded in Qatar.

As Rubio testifies this week, members should put these names and this concentration of authority on the record, because there is no longer anyone left to pass the question to.

A bipartisan letter on the Afghans still held at Camp As Sayliyah

About 1,100 Afghans remain at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, the U.S. government facility where allies were sent for final vetting and onward movement to the United States. Around 800 are women and children. Roughly 150 are immediate family members of active-duty U.S. service members. They have been held in transit for over a year while the refugee program sits suspended. Reps. Jason Crow and Don Bacon are now circulating a bipartisan letter pressing the State Department for answers on any current or proposed plan to relocate that population.

The reason this letter matters is simple. Earlier this spring, senior State Department officials floated transferring the CAS population to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The administration says it is no longer pursuing that agreement, but the proposal has never been formally rescinded, and on May 17 the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern. A plan that was a betrayal when it surfaced is now a betrayal aimed at an active outbreak zone. The fact that it remains on the table at all tells you how thin the floor is for these families.

This is a choice, and it is a bipartisan one to fix. Reps Crow and Bacon have given every House office a clean, low-cost way to put the Department on notice.

Tell your representative to sign on before the June 8 deadline.

Take Action NOW

Meeting with Congressman Morelle

On Friday, we sat down with Congressman Joe Morelle in Rochester, alongside AfghanEvac member organization Keeping Our Promise, to walk through exactly where the pipeline stands and what his office can do to help make progress for our mission partners.

These meetings matter because they connect the national fight to the families living it in a specific district.

The Rochester Town Hall

We also held an AfghanEvac town hall in Rochester over the weekend for the local Afghan community, and more than sixty people turned out. That number is the story. More than sixty of our Afghan neighbors came out wanting straight answers on the status and future of the pathways their families depend on, the SIV program, P-1 and P-2 referrals, family reunification, and the question of legal status here in the United States.

Austin Ponce, the Western New York Regional Assistant for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, came to hear directly from Afghans about what they are facing, exactly the kind of presence that turns constituent stories into congressional attention. These are the people living inside every policy fight we cover, and showing up in person, in their community, is the least we can do.

The Keeping Our Promise Keynote

Over the weekend, I delivered the keynote at Keeping Our Promise’s Road to Resilience gala. The Rochester organization, led by Ellen Smith, has spent years getting Afghan and Iraqi allies to safety, and its volunteers were part of the team that helped secure the court win above.

The speech laid out where things stand, what the next stretch demands, and why this work cannot pause just because Washington has.

You can watch the full speech on our YouTube channel.

Watch the Full Speech

Keeping Our Promise, and a baby who almost did not make it

A few months ago, Keeping Our Promise was fighting to reunite an infant with his parents. The father had served the United States as a guard, and the family had earned their visas to come here. But the baby’s visa contained a single spelling error. Before it could be fixed, new entry restrictions slammed the door, and the child was suddenly blocked from the country his parents were cleared to enter. The parents faced an impossible choice. Stay in hiding in Afghanistan, where the father was hunted for his service, or leave for safety without their baby and pray someone could reunite them later. Their visas were expiring. The baby had none. With a regional conflict closing airspace and flights vanishing, the window was closing by the day.

They made the heartbreaking decision to travel ahead during a brief ceasefire, leaving their child behind. And for five months, Keeping Our Promise refused to let that be the end of the story. Petitions. Emails to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Calls. Late nights and early mornings working every channel to secure the baby a corrected visa, physically move a passport across a border, and then get that baby out to safety.

It worked.

Baby Mahdi made it to Rochester.

It happened because a community decided that love is stronger than fear, and because a handful of people refused to give up on one child.

That is the work. Not abstraction, not policy in the aggregate, but one guard, one wife, one baby, and a promise someone insisted on keeping. When people ask what is actually at stake in the fights we cover every week, this is the answer.

A personal word about Ellen and Judy

I want to step out of the organizational voice for a moment and speak for myself. The baby in that story is alive and with his parents because two women in Rochester decided that was going to happen and then made it true. Ellen and Judy have spent more than a decade doing this work, the late-night calls, the emails to embassies, the cases nobody else would touch, the families everyone else had written off. They do not do it for recognition, and they almost never get it.

What Ellen and Judy have built is generational. More than 2,000 allies and their families have been resettled in Rochester because of Keeping Our Promise, and the children who arrived terrified are now on honor rolls, the mothers once barred from school are earning degrees, and sixty-one families have bought homes and put down roots. That is not a program. That is a legacy, measured in human lives that will ripple forward for decades. Across the entire AfghanEvac community, there are people safe today who would not be if Ellen and Judy had decided this was too hard.

I got to spend real time with both of them this weekend, and I left more determined than I arrived. They are the best of what this coalition is. Thank you, Ellen. Thank you, Judy. We are honored to stand beside you.

Next stop, Texas

This week we head to Texas, and it is a full schedule. We will host two town halls, one in Fort Worth on June 3 and another in Dallas on June 4.

While we are there, we will meet with DFW-area resettlement affiliate partners, and we will sit down with the Afghan staff who work inside those agencies, the people doing the daily work of resettlement and who too often carry it without recognition.

If you are in Fort Worth or Dallas, we want to see you at a town hall. Reach out and we will get you the details.

And if you are anywhere else and want us to bring a town hall to your community, tell us at afghanevac.org/town-hall. We are building the next round of these now.

In the press

• New Trump administration rule forces most immigrants seeking green cards to return to home countries first — Houston Public Media

• Trump administration plan would allow for quick asylum rejections without interviews — CBS News

• US veteran charged with ‘conspiracy’ over ICE protest refuses to plead guilty — The Guardian

• Mike Needham promoted to top White House national security post — Axios

• Rubio promotes top aide Mike Needham to role on National Security Council — The Washington Post

• US draws up plans to halt immigration, customs processing at ‘sanctuary city’ airports — Reuters

• Exclusive: Brussels to host Taliban in talks on Afghan deportations — Euractiv

• Russia and Taliban sign military agreement — The Independent

• Rochester’s Road to Resilience gala supports Afghan allies — Rochester First

• Shawn VanDiver on Camp As Sayliyah Future, Legal Updates — The Afghanistan Project Ep. 143

For nearly five years, we have shown up for our mission partners.

Since the day this administration took over, they have hidden behind a nebulous “Afghanistan policy review” while quietly dismantling everything built to support those same allies.

One side keeps showing up. The other will not even say plainly what it has done.

This week is an opportunity for accountability. The only open question is whether Congress takes it.

That is why every reader has to act, and has to ask their friends to act too. Ask the questions. Sign the letter. Then send this to someone and tell them to do the same.

Yesterday, the country observed Memorial Day.

We remember the 2,461 American service members who gave their lives in Afghanistan, the thirteen who died at Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021, and every Gold Star family who has carried that loss in the years since.

We remember the Afghan interpreters, soldiers, and partners who fell beside them.

The promise we are fighting to keep was made in their company.

The day after the wreaths are laid is the day the work resumes.

This is that day.

This week we are also reminding our community that wherever you are, in the United States or anywhere in the world, you can ask us to come to you.

We show up.

Town halls coming up in Rochester, Dallas, and Fort Worth. More cities on the way.

Sign up at afghanevac.org/town-hall and we will build a visit around the people who want us there.

ACTION THIS WEEK

• Read and share the new USCIS adjustment of status explainer. afghanevac.org/aos-guidance-change

• Call your senator and your representative before Tuesday, June 2. Secretary Rubio testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, June 2, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, June 3. Ask your members to press him on CAS, the new AOS memo, and June SIV compliance benchmarks. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121.

• Register your interest in our town halls. Learn more in the writeup below, but we want to come to your area and can only do that if we have a critical mass of people.

• Donate. afghanevac.org/donate

• Share this with your networks.

  Share

CAS UPDATE — THE DRC PLAN IS DEAD. THE PROMISE IS NOT.

The administration’s plan to relocate Afghan allies from Camp As Sayliyah to the Democratic Republic of the Congo is dead. After weeks of public pressure, a 29-senator letter led by Senator Blumenthal, sustained press attention, an open letter signed by over 1,000 people, and the courage of CAS residents like Zahra, the State Department is back to the drawing board on where the 1,100 Afghan allies still held at the camp will go.

This is a real win but it is not the win. The State Department is now identifying alternative destinations, and we are tracking that work closely with our partners and our congressional allies. We are not going to speculate publicly about specific options under discussion. What we will say is what we have always said. Approximately 900 of the 1,100 people at CAS are already approved for U.S. admission. Around 150 are immediate family members of active-duty U.S. service members. More than 400 are children. They were vetted. They were promised. They are owed the destination they were promised.

So what does success look like at CAS. It is the same as it has been since this began.

1. U.S. admission for those who can clear, through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program or humanitarian parole, the path Senator Shaheen named in her May letter to Secretary Rubio.

2. For any case that cannot move directly to the United States, a third-country arrangement that respects the service these allies rendered to our nation, with durable legal status, freedom of movement, family unity, and access to continued U.S. case processing.

Nothing less.

Significant effort is going into making that outcome real. Coalition partners, members of Congress in both parties, retired flag officers, faith leaders, and Afghan-led organizations are all working this from different angles, in different rooms, with the same goal. The DRC plan is dead because we made it untenable.

If the next plan is bad, we’ll do everything in our power to make that one untenable too.

And we will keep showing up, in public and in private, until every person at CAS has an answer that honors what was promised to them.

CAS Explainer

USCIS QUIETLY REDEFINES THE GREEN CARD

On May 21, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, the most consequential administrative action against Afghan allies inside the United States since the travel ban. It does not change a single line of statute. It changes how every USCIS officer is now instructed to treat humanitarian parolees, which is to say nearly every Afghan ally brought here through Operation Allies Welcome.

In the policy memo, Adjustment of status is reframed as an “extraordinary” act of “administrative grace.” Officers are told to treat parole entry as a negative factor and to require “unusual or even outstanding equities” before approving. A clean record, a job, a family, a life built across four years in America, none of that is sufficient on its own anymore.

The administration’s stated alternative is consular processing from the home country. For Afghan allies, that alternative does not exist. The U.S. embassy in Kabul has been closed since August 2021. The administration is directing Afghan allies to pursue a pathway it knows is unavailable.

A denial does not deport anyone today. It begins the chain. Denial triggers referral to immigration court, which initiates removal proceedings, which end in deportation orders. This memo belongs alongside the Chamorro detention memo, the travel ban, the SIV processing freezes, and the executive orders suspending refugee admissions. Taken together, they are a coordinated administrative campaign to block Afghan allies from achieving lawful permanent residence in the country they helped serve.

Adjustment of Status Guidance Explainer

If you have a pending adjustment application, talk to a qualified immigration attorney now.

Read our Statement

IF YOU RECEIVED A CHIEF OF MISSION DENIAL OR WITHDRAWAL OF SUPPORT

We are seeing a sharp rise in Chief of Mission denials and withdrawals of support being issued to Afghan allies who are already inside the United States. These letters revoke the underlying approval that anchors the SIV pathway and, depending on the recipient’s posture, can cascade into a loss of status, work authorization, or legal protection from removal.

The letters look like this

If you are in the United States and you have received a COM denial or a withdrawal of support, fill out our intake form at afghanevac.org/com-help. Once we have your information, we will refer you to a legal services provider. We will also share de-identified data with the immigration attorneys and litigators working on this issue, so the response keeps up with the scale of what is happening.

A few things to be clear about.

This is for people in the United States only. If you are outside the United States, this intake will not be actioned, and we will not give anyone false hope. The legal questions for allies still in transit are different and require different support.

You must include proof that you are in the United States. The form will ask for a copy of your green card. Without it, the intake will not move forward.

Do not wait. A COM denial or withdrawal of support is not the end of your case, but the response window matters. Submit your information today.

We will keep updating the community as the legal response develops. If you know an ally who has received one of these letters, forward this section to them today.

Get Help

COME SEE US, OR LET US COME TO YOU

As often as we are asked, we visit Afghan communities around the country and around the world to answer questions, hear stories, and build community. We take what we hear and carry the voices of our allies into Congress, into the press, and into the rooms where decisions are made. San Diego this past weekend is one example. There will be more.

For security reasons, we do not usually share town hall details publicly more than a few days in advance. We do circulate flyers throughout the Afghan community in each region as the event approaches. If you are a community leader in a region we are visiting, we will get the flyer to you.

We have town halls coming up in the next few days in Rochester, Dallas, and Fort Worth. If you are in one of those communities, sign up now so we can get you the details. If you want us to come to your community, sign up. The more interest we see from a region, the faster we can build a visit around it.

Sign up for a town hall

A note for Afghan women and girls specifically. The May 23 listening session at Kunduz Kabob House was the kind of conversation we want to keep having, in more places, with more women and girls at the table. If you want to be part of the next one, join our Women and Girls engagement list. This list is for women and girls only.

Join our Women and Girls list

DORCAS INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RHODE ISLAND v. USCIS

Counsel argued Dorcas on May 21, challenging four USCIS policies that have functionally frozen adjustment of status for refugees and asylees, the Global Asylum Hold, the Benefits Hold, Comprehensive Re-Review, and the Country-Specific Factors Policy. We expect a ruling, or at least an indication of where the court is heading, in the coming days or weeks. As soon as we have it, we will put it out. Watch your inbox.

ENGAGEMENT CONTINUES WITH TALIBAN IN EUROPE

Last week, we shed light on the fact that European countries such as Germany have opened talks with the Taliban regime to potentially repatriate Afghan asylum seekers from Germany back to Afghanistan. Pathways for Afghans are being restricted everywhere, and this latest move by European governments puts even more pressure on advocacy groups and Afghan communities to share their stories about why negotiations with the Taliban put all Afghans at risk.

Right now in Germany, talks are ongoing between members of the German government and other European entities to ensure that Afghans have a safe pathway to a durable life for them and their families.

#AfghanEvac is showing up by standing in solidarity with our German Afghan community and advocating for every Afghan voice to be heard instead of the Taliban regime who continue to put millions in harms way.

BATTLE BUDDIES IN NEW YORK CITY

The Battle Buddies team spent time in New York City this past week alongside volunteers from the New Sanctuary Coalition, observing immigration court hearings at 26 Federal Plaza. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was also in the courtroom. The pattern across the master hearings was unmistakable. In nearly every case, respondents were either pretermitted or pressured into accepting voluntary departure. Only two cases made it through to scheduling for individual hearings, and those individual hearings are now being set for October 2029 because of the backlog. That timeline cuts both ways. It puts the merits of these cases past the current administration, which is the upside. It also leaves respondents exposed to ICE detention for years in the interim, which is the danger. Court observation is part of how we document that danger and push back on it.

The Battle Buddies team also joined the New Sanctuary Coalition’s weekly pro se clinic at 55 West 15th Street in Manhattan. If you are in the New York City area and do not have legal representation, the clinic can help with forms, paperwork, and navigating the immigration legal process. Clinics run Wednesday evenings from 5:45 to 8 PM.

Our 100 percent no-detention record for Battle Buddies holds.

Sign up to be a Battle Buddy

CONGRESS, POSTPONEMENTS AND A HEARING THAT MATTERS

The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on 25 years in Afghanistan, with witnesses from SIGAR, has been postponed again. After moving from May 19 to June 24, it has now been pushed to after the August recess, with a working target of Tuesday, September 2. This is the second postponement in two months.

The hearing's framing is the 25-year arc since 9/11, but anyone watching knows that arc does not end at the war. It ends at the withdrawal, the broken promises, the people still at CAS, and the people receiving Chief of Mission revocations in the mail. We expect those topics to come up. We will be in the room when they do.

We will come back in August with more information. AfghanEvac will host a happy hour following the hearing, co-hosts and sponsors welcome, email shawn@afghanevac.org.

Sign up to show up

The hearings that matter this coming week are back-to-back. On Tuesday, June 2, Secretary Rubio testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On Wednesday, June 3, he testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two days, two committees, one Secretary, and the first major opportunity since the DRC plan collapsed for members of Congress to put him on the record about what comes next. We are working with offices on both sides of the aisle, in both chambers, to make sure the questions get asked. The three that matter most.

1. With the DRC scenario abandoned, what is the State Department’s plan for the 1,100 vetted Afghan allies at CAS, and on what timeline. Will the Department admit eligible CAS residents to the United States under USRAP or humanitarian parole.

2. How does the Department reconcile the new USCIS adjustment of status memo, which directs Afghan parolees to consular processing in their home country, with the fact that there is no U.S. consular presence in Afghanistan.

3. How does the Department intend to meet the monthly SIV processing benchmarks ordered by Judge Chutkan beginning in June.

If a senator on Foreign Relations or a representative on Foreign Affairs represents you, call before Monday. We have sent more than 30 documented communications to senior officials over 15 months. We have not had a principal-level meeting. The record speaks for itself. Postponement is not denial. It is delay. Delay is policy.

Watch the Hearing

ON THE GROUND IN SAN DIEGO

San Diego carried a lot this week.

Standing with our Muslim neighbors. Before we get to anything else local, we hold the families and community of the Islamic Center of San Diego. On Monday, May 18, two teenage gunmen opened fire outside the largest mosque in San Diego County, killing Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha, and Nader Awad. The three men gave their lives shielding worshippers and the 140 children inside the school next door. Authorities are investigating the attack as a hate crime. Our hearts are with the families. Our hearts are with Imam Taha Hassane and the entire Islamic Center community. And our gratitude is with the city of San Diego, which wrapped its arms around our Muslim neighbors in the days that followed, with hundreds gathering for an interfaith vigil at Lindbergh Park, faith leaders of every tradition standing beside Imam Hassane, and neighbors of every background showing up. That is the San Diego we know.

Hate does not stay in its lane. The logic that says one community is the threat is the same logic used to scapegoat Afghan allies, refugees, and immigrant families. We reject it wherever it appears, and we stand with every community in this city that has been told they do not belong.

Afghan Women and Girls Listening Session, Kunduz Kabob House. On Saturday, May 23, AfghanEvac and Second Families SD co-hosted a listening session for Afghan women and girls in the San Diego region. More than 60 women attended. The conversation was led in Pashto, Dari, and English. The room was theirs. We were there to listen. What we heard does not stay in the room. It travels with us to the Hill, to the press, and into the next round of policy fights. Thank you to Niamatullah B. Khan and Second Families SD, to Kunduz Kabob House, and to every woman and girl who came and spoke.

If you are an Afghan woman or girl and you want to be part of the next conversation, join our Women and Girls engagement list at afghanevac.org/women-and-girls. This list is for women and girls only.

Hazara Culture Day, Liberty Station. On Sunday, May 24, AfghanEvac was proud to stand with the Hazara community at Hazara Culture Day at Liberty Station. California Assemblymember Chris Ward, joined by Field Representative Michael Bravo, presented a Certificate of Recognition honoring California Hazaras. The Hazara community has carried generations of persecution in Afghanistan, most recently under the Taliban. Days like this are how a community insists on being seen and refuses to be reduced to a footnote.

AfghanEvac Event Remarks

In the Press

• "Showing Up is the Love Language of Advocacy." A Conversation with Shawn VanDiver of #AfghanEvac — Austin Kocher

• How the Trump administration is changing the green card application process — KCRA Sacramento

• Trump administration upends green card process, potentially compelling hundreds of thousands to leave US to apply — CNN

• New rule requires most green-card applicants to apply from outside U.S. — Washington Post

• Trump administration to force foreigners in the U.S. to apply for a green card abroad — NPR

• Trump’s Green Card Changes Could Force Hundreds of Thousands to Leave U.S. — TIME

The country paused yesterday to honor the fallen. Today, we get back to the work they would expect of us.

More than 1,100 vetted Afghan allies are still inside a camp we built, waiting for a destination the United States owes them and that is now, finally, back on the drawing board.

Tens of thousands more, already here and already vetted, woke up last week to a memo telling them the green card they were eligible for is now an act of grace.

Hundreds more are receiving letters revoking the Chief of Mission approval that anchors their legal pathway.

In San Diego this past weekend, Afghan women, girls, and Hazara families showed up for each other and asked us to keep showing up for them.

We will.

America made a promise.

We are not asking. We are reminding the people who made it that the deadline for keeping it is now.

We are furious. We are focused. And we are not going anywhere.

Meanwhile, the country the administration was prepared to send 1,100 vetted Afghan allies to is now under a WHO public health emergency for Ebola, and a familiar scammer is back, telling Afghan families to skip lawyers and trust him instead.

Here is where things stand and what to do about it.

Action This Week

• Read the new State Department SIV report and share our statement. The numbers tell the story. Review the report at go.afghanevac.org/2026-dos-update-siv. Our statement is here.

• Read and share this story on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is the country to which the administration was, until last week, planning to send 1,100 vetted Afghan allies. WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2p0wwzzdo

• Send us a 60-second video. Organizations and individuals welcome. Please do not put yourself at risk. We will post videos to amplify the work happening across this ecosystem. Send to share-my-video@afghanevac.org letting us know we have your permission to post. Please include your name, organization, and location.

The State Department Confirms What We Have Been Saying for Months

On Wednesday, May 13, the State Department released a report meant to update Congress on the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program. The headline numbers are unambiguous.

Current State of SIV

Scroll through yesterday’s Instagram update to learn more and keep reading below.

Zero SIVs have been issued to Afghan applicants since January 1, 2026.

Of the 50,500 principal applicant visas Congress authorized, 5,970 remain (like we said back in January, before official numbers were released).

The program is effectively closed. Since the application deadline came and went on December 31, 2025, no new Chief of Mission applications will be created, and the administration has paired the legal wind-down with a presidential proclamation that suspends visa issuance to Afghan nationals altogether. The Department says it is still reviewing applications and conducting interviews. It is not issuing visas. This is the policy outcome we have been documenting all year. A federal court ordered the government to keep adjudicating cases in February. The administration has complied with the letter of that order while ensuring nothing the adjudications produce can be acted on. Applicants are being told to show up for interviews, in most cases across borders and at significant cost, without being informed that under current policy their applications will be denied and they’ll have to start over when and if the travel ban is lifted. That is not a process. It is a trap.

The SIV report is significant because it is the program with the longest bipartisan record, an incredibly rigorous vetting framework, and the clearest statutory promise. The administration has chosen to let it close.

To be clear about what this report covers, this is the Special Immigrant Visa program for Afghans who served the United States during the war. It is not the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (P1 and P2). It is not family reunification. It is not asylum. Each of those tracks has its own status and its own active litigation, and we have a section on each below.

Our statement is on our website and all over our social media.

Read the Report

Case Processing Updates by Pathway

The SIV report is the headline this week, but the rest of the pipeline matters and continues to deteriorate. Here is where each pathway stands.

SIV. Adjudications continue under the February 6, 2026 court order in Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio. Visa issuance does not. The new report confirms zero issuances since January 1. Chief of Mission averages remain over 669 days. Approximately 178,000 Afghan SIV applicants have already received COM approval and are stranded somewhere in the pipeline.

SIV Current State

USRAP P1 and P2. The refugee admissions program remains suspended outside the narrow set of cases ordered restored under Pacito v. Trump. The Ninth Circuit upheld most of the suspension in March. Travel for the small group with imminent flights at the time of the freeze has resumed in small numbers, but the program is not running for the broader Afghan caseload. We hope to see Afghans included in the reportedly forthcoming “emergency” Presidential Determination update.

Family reunification. Families separated for years are still separated across all categories, with no relief expected in the near future.

Here is the full Pathways section and the Dorcas explainer that follows it, ready to drop in.

Case Processing Updates by Pathway

The SIV report is the headline this week, but the rest of the pipeline matters and continues to deteriorate. Here is where each pathway stands.

SIV. Adjudications continue under the February 6, 2026 court order in Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio. Visa issuance does not. The new report confirms zero issuances since January 1. Chief of Mission averages remain over 669 days. Approximately 178,000 Afghan SIV applicants have already received COM approval and are stranded somewhere in the pipeline.

USRAP P1 and P2. The refugee admissions program remains suspended outside the narrow set of cases ordered restored under Pacito v. Trump. The Ninth Circuit upheld most of the suspension last fall. Travel for the small group with imminent flights at the time of the freeze has resumed in small numbers, but the program is not running for the broader Afghan caseload. We hope to see Afghans included in the reportedly forthcoming “emergency” Presidential Determination update.

Family reunification. Families separated for years are still separated across all categories, with no relief expected in the near future.

Asylum. Asylum adjudications remain paused for nationals of all travel ban countries, including Afghans, under the USCIS “Global Asylum Hold” now being challenged in Dorcas v. USCIS. The new asylum fee rule takes effect May 29th, 2026. Combined with the surge in ICE enforcement and the elimination of categorical exemptions in Presidential Proclamation 10998, Afghan asylum seekers in the United States face a system that is both more expensive to navigate and more dangerous to engage.

Green cards and adjustment. As far as we can tell, green cards are only being processed for arriving SIVs, not for anyone else. The Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS case, which challenges the USCIS policies behind this freeze, has a hearing on Thursday, May 21 in front of Chief Judge McConnell. A ruling is expected to follow. See the explainer below.

What Is Dorcas v. USCIS, and Why It Matters for Your Case

If you have an asylum, green card, or work permit application pending with USCIS, this case may affect you directly.

The case. A coalition of immigrant service organizations and labor unions, represented by Democracy Forward, RAICES, Muslim Advocates, the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, and the South Asian American Justice Collaborative, sued USCIS in the District of Rhode Island on March 5, 2026. They are challenging four policies that, together, have shut down large portions of the legal immigration system for people already living in the United States.

The four policies. The “Global Asylum Hold” indefinitely halts affirmative asylum adjudications. The “Benefits Hold” freezes work permit, green card, and other benefit applications for nationals of countries on the travel ban list, including Afghanistan. The “Comprehensive Re-Review” subjects previously approved benefits to renewed scrutiny. The “Country-Specific Factors Policy” tells officers to weigh country of origin against an applicant in discretionary decisions.

Why it matters for the Afghan community. Three of these four sit directly on top of Afghan cases. Asylum seekers cannot move their cases forward. Green card and work permit applicants are caught in the Benefits Hold because Afghanistan is on the travel ban list. Afghans already granted status are exposed to the Comprehensive Re-Review. If the court strikes down any or all of these policies, the affected processing should resume.

Where it stands. Briefing closed on May 8. The court has set a hearing for Thursday, May 21 before Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. A ruling is expected to follow.

What to do now. Do not withdraw a pending application based on the current freeze. If you have an active asylum, green card, or work authorization case, talk to a credentialed immigration attorney about preserving your filing date. The case caption for your attorney is Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, 1:26-cv-00132 (D.R.I.). We will update the moment Chief Judge McConnell rules.

Bad Information Persists

The case processing freeze has produced a second crisis alongside the policy one. People with no real knowledge of how these systems work, no accountability to the community, and no access to the government they claim to represent are making decisions on behalf of vulnerable people who are looking to them for help. The damage is not theoretical. It is families spending money they do not have, skipping legal consultations that could save them, and walking into appointments without understanding the risk that denials carry for future visa consideration.

One example. In recent days, Saber Nasiri has told Afghan audiences that “lawyers are butchers and shouldn’t be trusted,” that case processing is moving forward and people should trust him on it, and that Afghans should keep traveling to their visa interviews. Read those claims against the State Department’s May 13 report. Zero SIVs issued in 2026. Telling Afghan families to distrust qualified legal counsel in a year of expanded ICE enforcement and a new asylum fee rule is dangerous on its own. Telling them to keep traveling to interviews without warning them their applications will not produce a visa is the same trap the State Department is setting, repackaged in friendlier language. This is not Nasiri’s first time doing this. During the CARE years, he was running the same playbook. We called him out then. He quietly went away for a time. He is back at it now.

Nasiri is not the only person spreading this kind of misinformation. He is indicative of a problem. The Afghan community has actual authoritative voices, coalition partners, credentialed attorneys, named officials, and case managers with track records anyone can verify. All of us, advocates, veterans, community leaders, journalists, and everyone with a platform, have an obligation to make sure what we share is accurate. If you do not know, say so. If you are not sure, ask someone who does. If you have a microphone, use it carefully.

If you are an Afghan ally or family member, do not take case advice from social media influencers. Talk to a credentialed immigration attorney. Use the AfghanEvac partner network. Consult the State Department’s official channels at AfghanSIVapplication@state.gov.

The U.S. government does not charge fees for SIV or Chief of Mission approval, does not contact applicants through messaging apps, and has not authorized any private individual to communicate status on its behalf.

If you have lost money or personal information to a scammer, report it to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

The Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

On Sunday, May 17, the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern. As of the WHO declaration, the outbreak had produced 246 suspected cases and 80 suspected deaths in the DRC’s Ituri province, with 9 laboratory-confirmed cases and additional confirmed cases reported in Goma and in Kampala, Uganda. The strain is Bundibugyo, for which there is no approved vaccine or therapeutic. Prior Bundibugyo outbreaks have killed around 40 percent of those infected.

This is the country to which, three weeks ago, senior State Department officials were proposing to send the 1,100 Afghan allies at Camp As Sayliyah, including more than 400 children and approximately 150 immediate family members of active-duty U.S. service members.

We said in April that the DRC plan was unsafe, coercive, operationally unserious, and morally indefensible. The Ebola declaration is not the reason it was wrong. It is one more reason it was wrong, and it removes any remaining ambiguity about the consequences of that proposal had it gone forward. Vetted Afghan allies, women, children, interpreters, and commandos would have been placed into a country in active conflict with Rwanda, hosting more than 600,000 existing refugees it cannot support, and now facing a regional Ebola outbreak.

The administration should formally rescind the DRC scenario, publicly confirm it is off the table, and brief Congress on what comes next.

Read the BBC Report

Congressional Hearing Postponed

The congressional hearing which was scheduled for this week has been postponed. We will publish the new date as soon as it is set but we’ve heard either June 24th or sometime in September.

Senator Shaheen Calls on State to Admit CAS Residents

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Secretary Rubio May 7th urging the administration to admit the vetted Afghan allies at Camp As Sayliyah to the United States under USRAP or humanitarian parole rather than continue the third-country relocation search. Her letter is consistent with, and builds on, the 29-senator letter Senator Blumenthal led after the April 25 virtual congressional delegation to CAS.

This is the Ranking Member of SFRC, with the full weight of that institutional position, telling the Secretary of State that the answer to CAS is admission to the United States. There is no third-country search that gets this right. Congo has now demonstrated that beyond any reasonable doubt.

If your senator or representative has not yet weighed in, ask them to. Specifically ask them to join Senator Shaheen and the 29 senators on Senator Blumenthal’s letter in publicly supporting U.S. admission for vetted CAS residents.

Read the Letter

Pipeline snapshot, carried forward. Roughly 260,000 Afghan allies in processing across 90 countries. Roughly 178,000 with Chief of Mission approval. Roughly 1,100 at CAS. 5,970 SIV visas remaining in the annual allocation per the State Department’s May 13 report. These numbers are what is at stake.

In the Press

• The End of Refugee Resettlement — The New Yorker

• U.S. State Department: No SIV visas issued to Afghans in 2026 — 8AM Media

• Ebola outbreak declared global public health emergency in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda — BBC News

• ‘I’m on panic mode,’ says health official as Ebola outbreak declared global public health emergency in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda — Sky News

• WHO declares global health emergency over Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda — NBC News

• World Health Organization declares Ebola outbreak in Congo a global health emergency — NPR

• World Health Organization declares Ebola outbreak in Congo a global health emergency — KPBS

• WHO declares Ebola outbreak in Congo, Uganda an emergency of international concern — CBC News

• WHO declares Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda a global health emergency — PBS NewsHour

• Can new Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions lead to another border clash? — Al Jazeera

• Why Are the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan in an ‘Open War’? — Council on Foreign Relations

• Ebola outbreak 2026: Q&A with experts — Imperial College London

• Africa CDC Calls for Urgent Regional Coordination Following Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak in Ituri Province, DRC, and Imported Ebola Bundibugyo Case Reported by Uganda — Africa CDC

The State Department’s own numbers, published this week, confirm what Afghan applicants have been living for five months. Zero visas issued.

The most rigorously vetted legal immigration pathway in modern U.S. history wound down without a vote, without a debate, and without honor.

A second proposal to send the people still owed safe passage to a country now facing an Ebola public health emergency has, by Sunday’s WHO declaration, become indefensible on grounds no one in this administration can dispute.

The path forward is not complicated. Admit vetted Afghan allies to the United States. Honor the SIV statute that still exists. Restore the adjudications USCIS has frozen.

We are furious. We are focused. We are not going anywhere.

The pressure is working. The window is open. Here is where things stand.

Action This Week

• Sign the CAS open letter at afghanevac.org/sign. Over 1,000 Americans have already signed.

• Amplify Judge Chutkan’s enforcement order. The order is on the public docket here. Post it, send it, cite it.

• Share Zahra’s story in The Independent. A 15-year-old at CAS recorded a video message to the First Lady. She shouldn’t have had to. Read and share.

  Donate to AfghanEvac

Judge Chutkan Orders SIV Compliance

On May 8, in Afghan and Iraqi Allies v. Rubio, Judge Tanya Chutkan signed an enforcement order finding the State Department has “woefully failed” to meet its obligations under the Revised Adjudication Plan. The court ordered monthly Chief of Mission processing benchmarks, 1,000 cases in June, 2,000 in July, 3,000 in August and September, and at least 4,000 every month thereafter until the backlog is cleared. The Department must file a public compliance notice on the docket every month and, if it misses a benchmark, explain why.

Why it matters

A federal judge has now publicly found the Department’s conduct is a compliance failure, not a discretionary choice. The benchmarks are not strict mandates, the order uses “endeavor” language, and the travel ban still automatically denies visas after CoM approval. But the order forces the Department to put its numbers on the public record, every month, where reporters, Congress, and class counsel can read them. That is real accountability infrastructure where there was none.

Read the Order

USCIS Sending Unexpected “Action Taken” Notices to Already-Approved Afghans

Afghans in touch with our teams, and reports filtering in through partner organizations across the coalition, point to a wave of unexpected messages from USCIS in recent days. The messages appear as notifications inside recipients’ USCIS online accounts. They read along the lines of “we have taken an action in your case” and indicate the case is still being processed, even where adjustment of status (green card) and other immigration benefits applications were approved months or years ago. In at least one reported instance, an applicant’s case status reverted to a prior pending status for roughly 24 to 36 hours before being restored. USCIS has acknowledged the issue and said it is under investigation. No public guidance has been issued to affected applicants.

Why it matters

If approved cases can quietly flip back to “pending” without explanation, no Afghan with status in the United States can trust that the approval they hold today will be the approval they hold tomorrow. Even if the trigger is technical, the pattern sits on top of the USCIS adjudication freeze on travel-ban-country nationals, the proposed retroactive refugee reinterview program, and the broader policy of subjecting already-vetted Afghans to second and third reviews. Until USCIS publishes guidance, Afghans who receive one of these messages should not act on it unilaterally. Document the notification, including timestamps and screenshots. Talk to a qualified immigration attorney before responding. Stay in touch with your resettlement agency. We will publish guidance as soon as USCIS does, and we will keep escalating in the meantime.

The Open Letter Has Crossed 1,000 Signatures

The open letter to Secretaries Mullin and Rubio has crossed 1,000 signatories, including General Stanley McChrystal, retired ambassadors, veterans, faith leaders, military families, and refugee resettlement organizations. Senator Blumenthal led 28 of his Senate colleagues to send the administration a parallel letter calling the DRC plan “one of the most cruel and imprudent betrayals in our nation’s history.” Coalition volunteers and AfghanEvac staff hand-delivered the letter to 50 congressional offices this week and posted from the drop-offs across our channels.

Why it matters

The letter is a public record the administration cannot say it never received. It asks for action already within executive authority, including admitting approved refugees, ensuring safe conditions at CAS, resuming SIV and refugee processing, and briefing Congress on the legal basis for continued detention. Every additional signature widens the record. If you have not signed, sign. If your organization has not signed, get it on the list.

We sent the original letter last week and I assured the leaders who received it that we would be sure to update them as the letter grows.

Read and Sign

We broke the story of the letter on Anderson Cooper 360.

A Mother’s Day Note

This is the fifth Mother’s Day since the fall of Kabul. Afghan moms in our community have not seen their children in four or five years. Afghan children at CAS have not seen their grandmothers. There are families with mom in Kabul, dad in Kansas, and the kids split between them. None of this is accidental. Each separation is the result of a U.S. policy choice that has not been unmade.

Why it matters

The largest evacuation in American history is unfinished, and the people paying for that unfinished work are mothers and their kids. To every Afghan mom apart from her children today, we see you. We are not quitting until these families are whole.

Zahra Should Not Have Had to Be the Face

Zahra is 15. She has spent most of the last two years at CAS, where there is no school for teenage girls and where missile debris has fallen close enough to terrify her 11-year-old brother. This week, The Independent ran her video message to the First Lady. Senator Blumenthal amplified it on her birthday. Anderson Cooper and Scripps covered the broader CAS situation. International coverage hit four continents and seven languages.

Why it matters

It is good that her story broke through. It is not good that her story had to. A 15-year-old in the legal custody of the United States should not have had to record a public appeal to be treated as a person. The work is not to make her famous. The work is to bring her home.

Read her story

Qatar Sets a September Deadline. Malaysia Is on the Table. DRC Is Still in Play.

On May 8, diplomatic documents released by the State Department confirmed that Qatar has asked the United States to relocate all CAS residents out of Doha by September 2026, and to refrain from sending any additional Afghans to Qatari territory. Separately, we are hearing Malaysia is being discussed as a destination for a small subset of CAS residents, likely women. The DRC remains under active consideration. Do not believe anyone who tells you the DRC is off the table until that statement comes officially from the State Department. Anonymous sourcing and well-intentioned reassurance are not the same as a public Department commitment.

Why it matters

Roughly 900 of the 1,100 people at CAS are already approved for U.S. admission. Approximately 150 are immediate family of active-duty U.S. service members. More than 440 are children. Qatar’s September window now sits over all of this as a hard timeline. The right destination for vetted, approved Afghan allies in U.S. custody is the United States. Every other conversation is a workaround.

Until State publicly closes the DRC option, the right posture is unchanged. Press. Amplify. Sign. Call.

Europe Is Quietly Engaging the Taliban

The same week the U.S. is trying to manufacture a refusal from CAS residents, our European partners are walking into the same trap from the opposite direction. On May 1, the German investigative program ZDF Magazin Royale, exposed a series of meetings between officials at Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and individuals identified as Taliban representatives, held in Bonn and at Berlin Brandenburg Airport. The purpose, according to the reporting, was to coordinate deportation documentation and identify Afghan nationals for return. German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has publicly committed to continuing deportation flights to Afghanistan on an ongoing basis, including, where necessary, through direct communication with the Taliban.

Germany is not alone. Twenty European countries, including Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, and Norway, have formally pressed the European Commission to negotiate a returns arrangement with Kabul. An EU special envoy visited the Taliban in April. Brussels is preparing to host a Taliban technical delegation before the summer. The European Commissioner for Migration, Magnus Brunner, has publicly said that engagement with the Taliban “is not an option” Europe can avoid. Negotiations like this lend public credence to the idea that return is acceptable for those fleeing the extremist Taliban regime.

Member of European Parliament Hannah Neumann warned this week that each coordinated return “gives the Taliban more power instead of weakening them.”

Why it matters

The same logic the Trump administration is using to push Afghans out of CAS, pretending Afghanistan is “safe enough” for return, is influencing Brussels to potentially justify deportations into Taliban hands. Every European deportation flight handed off to Taliban officials normalizes the regime as Afghanistan’s de facto government and forecloses a destination of last resort for Afghans fleeing harm. Non-refoulement is not a regional principle. It is a principle of international law, and right now it is being eroded on both sides of the Atlantic, by governments that all signed the same treaties.

This is bigger than any one country’s policy. It is a coordinated retreat from a baseline obligation, and AfghanEvac will be saying so publicly to our European counterparts and to our coalition partners working this same fight in Europe.

We will be engaging on this and look forward to keeping you looped on the issue.

All Souls Church

I had the honor of speaking at All Souls Church in Washington, DC this weekend on faith, civic obligation, and what we owe those who stood with us when standing with us was the most dangerous thing they could do.

Shoutout to Samad and Carrie, who showed up at All Souls to support our efforts there.

Pipeline Snapshot

Roughly 260,000 Afghan allies in processing across 90 countries. Roughly 178,000 with Chief of Mission approval. Roughly 1,100 at CAS. Roughly 5,900 SIV visas remaining in the annual allocation. Last week’s numbers. They will be next week’s numbers if nothing changes. That is the point.

In the Press
CAS, DRC, and the open letter

• They were hunted by the Taliban for helping the US. Now Trump wants to send these families to the DRC — The Guardian

• Afghan girl issues emotional appeal to Melania Trump after more than a year and a half in U.S. camp — The Independent

• Trump admin considering resettling Afghans to the DRC — CNN Anderson Cooper 360

• Advocates slam Trump plan to send wartime Afghan allies to Congo — KPBS / Scripps

• Afghans promised a home in U.S. may face repatriation, and the Taliban — Washington Post / Detroit News syndication

• Qatar has asked the United States to relocate Afghan refugees by September — Hasht-e Subh

• US considering sending stranded Afghans in Qatar to the Congo, advocacy group says — Middle East Eye

• Ranking Member Shaheen presses State Department to resettle Afghan allies in the United States — Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Europe and the Taliban

• Germany: More deportations to Afghanistan raise criticism over collaboration with Taliban — InfoMigrants

• Germany holds secret talks with Taliban amid controversial Afghan deportations — AtlasPress / ZDF Magazin Royale

• Brussels prepares to engage with Taliban on Afghan deportations — Brussels Signal

• EU considers talks with Taliban in Brussels over Afghan returns — Belga News Agency

• MEP Neumann warns deportations to Afghanistan could strengthen Taliban — Future Afghanistan

Inside Afghanistan and across the region

• Afghanistan risks losing 25,000 women teachers and health workers — UN News

• Speaking up for girls’ education carries heavy risks in Afghanistan — Inter Press Service

• Pakistan: Surge in forced returns of Afghan refugees — Human Rights Watch

• Over 9,000 Afghans return from Pakistan in two days as deportation drive intensifies — KabulNow

• Pakistan must immediately halt deportation of Afghan refugees — Refugees International

Every outcome above is the result of a choice someone with authority is making, and every one of them can be unmade by someone with the same authority choosing differently. The court forced one such choice into the open this week. A thousand Americans forced another. Twenty-nine senators forced a third. A teenager in Doha forced a fourth.

The promise was made by Americans. The work of keeping it is American work. On this day-after-Mother’s Day, with families still apart and a refusal plan still on the table, we will keep doing that work in every room where it matters.

We are furious. We are focused. And we are not going anywhere.