Afghanistan Peace CampaignTens of thousands of Afghans who resettled in the United States over the past four years could see their immigration statuses in jeopardy following Wednesday’s shooting of two National Guard troops.
The person suspected of carrying out the attack was one of the more than 190,000 Afghans who had resettled in the United States since 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome or Enduring Welcome, programs created by the Biden administration for Afghans fleeing the Taliban takeover.
Hours after the shooting on Wednesday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it would pause processing all immigration requests from Afghan nationals. More changes were announced on Thursday: The Department of Homeland Security said it had begun a review of asylum cases that were approved under the Biden administration, and Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said on X that the agency will undertake a “rigorous re-examination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern,” meaning the 19 countries from which travel is currently restricted.
The sweeping pronouncements on immigration left many recent Afghan immigrants shaken and anxious.
“It was very shocking, sad news for us last night,” said Toryalai Takal, 40, who worked with the U.S. government as an air traffic controller at the Kabul International Airport and was evacuated out of the country in September 2021 as part of Operation Allies Welcome, which allowed many Afghan nationals — including some who had assisted the American war effort — temporary legal status in the United States after the Taliban retook control of the country. The program was later extended under the name Enduring Welcome.
Mr. Takal resettled in Houston on his own before moving to Bristol, Va., where his wife and children later joined him. His asylum claim was approved but his green-card application is still pending, and his wife and children have not yet been able to apply for legal permanent residency.
“Now the actions of one individual are affecting my legal status, and it’s causing anxiety for every family and every individual who left Afghanistan,” he said. “One person, and now an entire community will pay for that?”
Most Afghans who entered under the humanitarian program did not initially receive permanent legal status in the United States and were expected to apply for other forms of relief, such as asylum. Many were granted asylum and have pending applications for permanent residency.
But the administration’s response to yesterday’s shooting has thrown the lives of recent Afghan arrivals into disarray.
“The biggest uncertainty for me now is around my immigration status,” said Amina Aimaq, 27, who came to the United States in September 2023 and settled in Houston, where she now works in human resources at an insurance agency. Her green card application has been pending for over a year.
“And I worry about how this tragedy will affect all of the Afghans living across the United States who are simply trying to rebuild their lives and make positive contributions to their communities here,” she added.
Zarlasht Sarmast, 27, arrived in October 2023 and now works as a program coordinator at Bard College. Her green card was approved last year, but she’s uncertain whether that’s now in question. She said that the shooting was horrible but that the reaction to the suspect should not be applied to an entire country.
“It’s very disrespectful to people like me who are working hard, and we just want to live a normal life,” she said. “It makes us feel like no matter how hard we try to represent our country and culture in a better way, these kinds of ideologies will never change.”
Many recent arrivals with tenuous legal status feared speaking publicly and jeopardizing their or their families cases.
A 32-year-old Afghan who evacuated from Kabul in August 2021 and now works as an engineer at a construction company in Vermont said he was worried about his wife and three children, whose green card applications were pending. His children love going to school — one wants to be a doctor — and he said they’ve felt so welcomed by their community in Vermont, which now feels like home.
Ghulam Masoom Masoomi, 43, who arrived in the United States from Kabul in September 2021 after working for more than a decade as an air traffic controller, like Mr. Takal, said he was shocked and upset by yesterday’s “outrageous and cruel action” that reminded him of violence he witnessed after the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996.
It was understandable that the U.S. government and American people were expressing their anger about the shooting on social media, Mr. Masoomi said. But he hoped that in time, people would “separate the bad people from the good people.”
Additional reporting by Fahim Abed.