Exclusive – Trump to pull nearly 1,660 Afghan refugees from flights, says US official, advocates Reuters
By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nearly 1,660 Afghans approved by the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, have had their flights canceled under President Donald Trump’s order to suspend U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and a leading advocate said on Monday. relocation of refugees.
The group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the U.S., as well as Afghans who face Taliban retaliation for fighting for the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, said Shawn VanDiver, head of the #AfghanEvac coalition of U.S. veterans and advocacy groups. group and a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the U.S. but have not yet been granted flights from Afghanistan or neighboring Pakistan, they said.
Trump made cracking down on immigration a major promise of his victorious 2024 election campaign, leaving the fate of America’s refugee programs up in the air.
The White House and the State Department, which oversees U.S. refugee programs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The Afghans and the advocates are panicking,” VanDiver said. “I had to charge my phone four times today because he calls me so much.
“We warned them it was going to happen, but they did it anyway. We hope they’ll reconsider,” he said of contacts with Trump’s transition team.
VanDiver’s organization is the main coalition working with the US government to evacuate and resettle Afghans in the US since the Taliban seized Kabul as the last US forces left Afghanistan in August 2021 after two decades of war.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have been brought to the US by former President Joe Biden’s administration since the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Kabul.
One of dozens of executive orders Trump is expected to sign after he is sworn in for a second term on Monday has suspended US refugee programs for at least four months.
A new White House website said Trump was “suspending refugee resettlement, after communities were forced to house large and unsustainable migrant populations, straining community safety and resources.”
“We know that means unaccompanied children, (Afghan) partner forces who have trained, fought and died or been injured alongside our troops, and families of active-duty U.S. soldiers will be stuck,” VanDiver said.
VanDiver and the U.S. official said Afghans who have been cleared for resettlement as refugees in the U.S. have been removed from the manifests of flights scheduled to depart Kabul between now and April.
Minority Democrats on the House Foreign Relations Committee condemned the move, saying in a post on X that “this is what abandonment looks like. Leaving trusted, proven Afghan allies at the mercy of the Taliban is shameful.”
They include nearly 200 Afghan-American family members of active-duty U.S. soldiers born in the U.S. or Afghans who came to the U.S., joined the military and became naturalized citizens, they said.
Those removed from the flights also include an unknown number of Afghans who fought for the former U.S.-backed government in Kabul and about 200 unaccompanied Afghan refugee children or Afghan parents whose children were brought to the United States alone during the U.S. withdrawal, VanDiver said. and a US official.
An unknown number of Afghans who qualified for refugee status because they worked for American businesses or US-linked organizations are also in the group, they said.
