Monday Morning Update -- December 8, 2025

Laura Loomer leading the artificial escalation of rhetoric against our allies

This week we continued to push back on the far-reaching and asymmetric policy shifts coming from the White House, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security. The tragic shooting in Washington D.C. has been politicized as an anti-immigrant, anti-refugee story, but what it really is is a commentary on how we treat the people who fight our wars – both American service members and veterans, AND our wartime allies.

Friends, it’s a bad time for our allies. Over the past two weeks, the administration has effectively shut down nearly every immigration pathway available to Afghans. Oath ceremonies are being canceled, green card processing has stopped, Afghan SIV Chief of Mission decisions have ceased, all asylum cases are paused, visa issuance for Afghans has halted, and refugee processing remains frozen. On the enforcement side, Afghans are increasingly being intercepted at home, work, court, and other locations, with men detained and separated from their families. Many are being summoned to ICE appointments only to be detained upon arrival. The cumulative effect is a system-wide freeze paired with escalated enforcement, leaving tens of thousands of Afghan families in acute fear and unprecedented jeopardy.

In the middle of navigating these sweeping and harmful policy shifts, AfghanEvac also became the target of coordinated attacks from some of the nation’s loudest anti-Muslim figures, including Laura Loomer. Their intent is obvious: to distort the truth, inflame fear, and punish anyone who stands with Afghan communities. We are not deterred. We know who our allies are, we know what they sacrificed for this country, and we will not allow disinformation peddlers to derail the work or intimidate the coalition. If anything, these attacks reinforce just how essential our mission is and how much your support matters right now.

Policy & Operations Update
Over the last two weeks, the administration has issued a series of immigration policy changes that materially affect Afghans and the broader communities we serve. Coalition partners have compiled detailed resources summarizing each shift, including country-specific discretionary factors, pauses in adjudications, and visa processing stoppages. Below is a high-level overview of what has changed and what it means for our work moving forward.

USCIS Expands Discretionary Denial Authority
USCIS updated its discretionary adjudication criteria on November 27, adding sweeping new “negative factors” to the review process. Officers may now weigh identity-verification issues, social-media activity, alleged “anti-American views,” and country-specific vetting limitations as grounds to deny benefits. Several of these standards are subjective, retroactive, and unprecedented. In practice, they create significantly higher denial risk for Afghans—including those evacuated under U.S. government-directed processes.

• What we are seeing: USCIS sends Notice of Intent to Deny the benefit sought, offering the applicant the opportunity to show that they should qualify for an exception. Among other things, evidence of good standing in school/community are named.

• What applicants in this situation should do: Consult with an immigration attorney, immediately upon receipt of the notice.

Mandatory Re-Review of Biden-Era Refugees
A recently disclosed internal memo requires USCIS to re-evaluate roughly 233,000 refugees admitted between 2021 and 2025. This includes potential re-interviews and an immediate halt to green-card processing for this population. Terminations of refugee status, if they occur, would leave individuals with no appeal outside removal proceedings. In recent days, oath ceremonies have been canceled nationwide, and green-card processing for these refugees has stopped entirely.

Across-the-Board Pauses for Asylum and Travel-Ban Country Cases
With a December 2, 2025 Policy Memo, USCIS has frozen all asylum adjudications nationwide, regardless of nationality, and separately paused all benefit requests for individuals from PP 10949 (travel ban) countries. Previously approved cases for these nationalities will also be re-reviewed if the applicant entered the United States after January 20, 2021. Asylum cases for Afghans are fully paused, leaving tens of thousands in legal limbo without a path forward.

State Department Halts Afghan Visa Issuance
A November 28 cable instructs all U.S. consulates to refuse every immigrant and nonimmigrant visa application from Afghan passport holders under INA 221(g), including immediate relatives of U.S. Citizens and SIVs. Even printed visas must be revoked and applications re-refused. While interviews continue, no approvals are being granted, effectively pausing the SIV program and pushing all applicants into indefinite administrative processing. Existing valid visas in passports remain usable, and we have seen successful arrivals in the past two weeks. However, the Afghan SIV Unit has stopped issuing Chief of Mission decisions, freezing the process at one of the earliest and most important stages.

• What does this mean? A 221(g) refusal is a TEMPORARY refusal while the application is undergoing additional vetting. This is very different from the travel ban, which does not apply to SIV and IR categories as of the time of this email. With a temporary refusal, the State Department still owes the applicant a final visa adjudication.

• Visa categories subject to the travel ban, such as family members of greencard holders, will still get refused under 212(f), which is NOT temporary but a final adjudication of the visa application.

Upcoming Litigation on USCIS December 2 Policy Memo and State Departments pause on visa issuance for IR and SIV categories

• Red Eagle Law is assessing to offer litigation opportunities on the above two policies via group lawsuits; impacted families can sign up on their interest list to be notified when onboarding for a group lawsuit begins.

• If anyone knows of other upcoming litigation to track, please let us know.

Employment Authorization Validity Reduced to 18 Months
USCIS has reduced maximum EAD validity for refugees, asylees, parolees, individuals with pending asylum or adjustment applications, and several other categories from five years to 18 months or less. This change will increase administrative burden, heighten risk of employment gaps, and strain legal-service providers already dealing with surges in re-filings. Current EADs remain valid until their printed expiration date.

Escalated ICE Enforcement
Alongside these adjudication freezes, enforcement actions are intensifying. Afghans across the country are being intercepted at home, work, court, and other public settings. We are seeing men detained and separated from their families. All across the country, increasing numbers are being called in for ICE appointments and then detained upon arrival. These actions compound the harm of paused pathways and heighten fear in communities already experiencing prolonged uncertainty.

What This Means for AfghanEvac
These policy shifts create new barriers at every stage of the pipeline—from departure, to adjudication, to long-term stability in the United States. They also increase uncertainty and trauma for families already in limbo. Our work is more critical than ever: pushing accurate information, coordinating case strategy, elevating the human impact, and holding agencies accountable to both law and basic decency.

C-SPAN Appearance

Last Wednesday, I was a guest on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. In the 30-minute segment, we were able to dig in really deep on details that are so important for the general public to understand. Individuals from across the country called in with questions, and it was a great opportunity to address some real-time questions and dispel some commonly misunderstood inaccuracies. I was grateful for the chance to connect with callers, explain important details, and talk about the issues our Afghan allies face. You can watch the whole episode HERE.

International Partnerships

We’re also working to strengthen our international partnerships. Many countries around the world have been and are working to ensure that Afghans have pathways to safely and securely relocate – and we know that working together on these issues only makes us stronger. We’re excited to continue to build and and expand those relationships so that we can ensure that our wartime allies have the support they need globally. More to come on this in the next few weeks and months.

In the Press

• Fellow Unit Member Says Alleged D.C. Shooter Felt Abandoned by CIA — Rolling Stone

• Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Targets Even Closest Wartime Allies — Wall Street Journal

• From ‘criminals’ to ‘garbage’, Trump is ramping up anti-immigrant language — The Guardian

• Afghans in US and abroad fear ‘devolving situation’ amid Trump immigration crackdown — The Hill

• Afghan vetting after D.C. shooting — World News Group

• Trump Vows to Pause Migration from “Third World Countries” After Fatal National Guard Shooting — Democracy Now

• Politically Speaking: Changes to immigration policy impact Afghan allies — NBC San Diego

• Germany to comply ‘soon’ with top court ruling on Afghan judge’s visa — Reuters

• It was already a hard year for Northern Virginia’s Afghan community. Then came a shooting in D.C. — NPR WAMU

• Trump Administration Responds to Tragedy By Putting Hundreds of Thousands of Legal Immigrants’ Lives On Hold — American Immigration Council

• Afghan visas face cliff in Congress — Politico National Security Daily Newsletter

• Afghan advocate reckons with National Guard shooting — Politico West Wing Playbook

• I’m an Immigration Lawyer. Trump Is Shattering My Clients’ Lives — New York Times

It’s no accident that Laura Loomer and other anti-Muslim extremists have zeroed in on AfghanEvac this week. When policies are indefensible, people like them always step in to manufacture fear and assign blame to the most vulnerable. We refuse to let hate-mongers rewrite the story of our allies or bully us out of the work we were built to do. If they think shouting online will make us retreat, they haven’t been paying attention.

Moments like this test a nation’s character. Our allies stood with us through decades of war, and we will stand with them now, through every freeze, every delay, and every attempt to turn them into political scapegoats. Thank you for staying in this fight with us.