SPECIAL EDITION: Bipartisan Afghanistan TPS Act of 2026
A bipartisan bill would stop the deportation of Afghans this country promised to protect. Here is what it does, how it shields our allies, and what it will take to pass it.
Congress just did something it does too rarely. Four members, two Democrats and two Republicans, put their names on the same plain idea.
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.
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.
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.