By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nearly 1,660 Afghans who the U.S. government has allowed to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active U.S. military personnel, will be detained under President Donald Trump’s order suspending U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and a U.S. official, a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.
The group includes unaccompanied minors waiting to be reunited with their families in the U.S., as well as Afghans facing revenge from the Taliban for fighting for the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, said Shawn VanDiver, head of #AfghanEvac coalition of U.S. veterans and advocacy groups and the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the U.S. but have not yet been assigned flights from Afghanistan or neighboring Pakistan, they said.
Trump made a crackdown on immigration a key promise in his victorious 2024 election campaign, leaving the fate of U.S. refugee programs uncertain.
The White House and the State Department, which oversees U.S. refugee programs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Afghans and advocates are panicking,” VanDiver said. “I’ve had to charge my phone four times today because so many people are calling me.
“We warned them this would happen, but they did it anyway. We hope they reconsider,” he said of contacts with Trump’s transition team.
VanDiver’s organization is the main coalition working with the US government to evacuate and resettle Afghans in the US since the Taliban captured Kabul when the last US forces left Afghanistan in August 2021 after two decades of war.
Nearly 200,000 Afghans have been brought to the United States since the chaotic US troop withdrawal from Kabul by former President Joe Biden’s administration.
One of the dozens of executive orders Trump is expected to sign after he is sworn in for a second term on Monday suspends U.S. refugee programs for at least four months.
The new White House website says Trump is “suspending refugee resettlement after communities were forced to accommodate large and unsustainable migrant populations, straining community safety and resources.”
“We know this means unaccompanied children, (Afghan) partner forces who trained, fought and died or were injured alongside our troops, and families of active-duty U.S. service members will be stranded,” VanDiver said.
VanDiver and the U.S. official said the Afghans approved for resettlement as refugees in the U.S. would be removed from the cargo lists of flights they were scheduled to take from Kabul through April.
Minority Democrats on the House Foreign Relations Committee criticized the move and said in a post
They include nearly 200 family members of active-duty Afghan-American U.S. soldiers who were born in the U.S. or of Afghans who came to the U.S., joined the military and became naturalized citizens, they said.
Those removed from flights also include an unknown number of Afghans who fought for the previous U.S.-backed government in Kabul, as well as about 200 unaccompanied children of Afghan refugees or Afghan parents whose children traveled alone to the U.S. during the U.S. withdrawal were brought, said VanDiver and the U.S. official.
The group also includes an unknown number of Afghans who qualified for refugee status because they worked for U.S. contractors or U.S.-affiliated organizations.
