Nasir, a legal adviser to the Afghan Air Force during the war, helped approve airstrikes against Taliban fighters. He is still in Afghanistan, where he has lived in hiding since the Taliban takeover in 2021 while awaiting approval to resettle in the United States.
He had passed background checks and needed only a medical exam to finish the process, he said. But this past week, he and tens of thousands of other Afghans found their paths to the United States blocked by an executive action signed by President Trump.
The order suspended a resettlement program that brings thousands of legal refugees to the country each year. Among the many now in limbo are Afghans who assisted the American war effort and are seeking a new start and a sense of security in the United States.
Nasir, a former lieutenant colonel who asked that his full name not be used, wrote in a text message that Mr. Trump had “not only disregarded the interests of Afghans in this decision, but also failed to consider the interests of the United States.”
“How can the world and America’s allies rely on the U.S. government?” he added.
The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, in place since 1980, allows legal immigration for vetted people who have fled their home countries because of persecution, war or other threats. In suspending the program, Mr. Trump said that continuing it would burden communities that were not equipped to handle refugees.
Mr. Trump’s order, titled, “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” takes effect on Monday. It says that the secretary of state and the homeland security secretary may admit refugees on a case-by-case basis, but only if they determine that it is “in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”
The order does not specify when the suspension will end, saying that it will continue “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”
At least 40,000 Afghans were pursuing resettlement in the United States before the order was issued on Monday and refugee flights were halted the next day, according to #AfghanEvac, a coalition of 250 groups working to help Afghans immigrate.
The suspension is particularly devastating for the 10,000 to 15,000 Afghans who, according to #AfghanEvac, had been fully vetted and were preparing for flights. It is also a severe blow to an estimated 200 active-duty U.S. service members who are trying to get their families out of Afghanistan.
A U.S. Army paratrooper at Fort Liberty in North Carolina, who asked to be identified by his code name, Mojo, said he had spent the past year helping his sister and her husband apply for refugee status to enter the United States from Afghanistan.
Mojo, 26, was an interpreter for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He said he joined the U.S. Army two years ago after leaving Afghanistan in 2021 under a program that grants visas to Afghans who directly served the U.S. military or government.
His sister and brother-in-law, both physicians, are in hiding, fearing retribution from the Taliban because of Mojo’s military service, he said. They recently completed the lengthy refugee vetting process and were approved to resettle in the United States, he said. All that remained was to arrange a flight out of Afghanistan.
“We were so close to bringing them to safety — and suddenly it all got shut down,” Mojo said by phone from Fort Liberty, formerly known as Fort Bragg, where he serves in the 82nd Airborne Division.
When his sister heard the news, Mojo said, “she started crying — and I started crying with her.”
Shawn VanDiver, the president of #AfghanEvac, called the executive order a betrayal of Afghans who supported the U.S. government or military.
“Everyone is frozen in place — it’s heartbreaking,” he said in a phone interview.
Among those thrust into uncertainty are former members of the Afghan military and security forces, as well as judges and lawyers involved in prosecutions of Taliban members. Some of the judges and lawyers are women, who have been persecuted by the Taliban.
Mr. VanDiver said that suspending the resettlement program did not address the problem of illegal entry by migrants at the southern U.S. border — a focus of Mr. Trump’s campaign. Individuals in the program cannot apply by themselves, but must be referred by U.S. government agencies or designated nongovernmental partners.
“Failing to protect our Afghan allies sends a dangerous message to the world: that U.S. commitments are conditional and temporary,” Mr. VanDiver said.
Hundreds of thousands of the Afghans who fled after the Taliban takeover landed in neighboring Pakistan. Large numbers live in the capital, Islamabad, where they have pursued resettlement in the United States and other Western countries through the embassies and refugee agencies there.
Many fear that they will be deported back to Afghanistan now that their pathway to the United States has been cut off. Pakistan has already expelled hundreds of thousands of Afghans because of rising tensions with the Taliban.
“For three years, we endured relentless harassment from Pakistani authorities,” said Ihsan Ullah Ahmedzai, a journalist who worked with U.S.-funded media outlets in Kabul, the Afghan capital, before fleeing to Islamabad in 2021. “But we remained hopeful that we would soon leave for the United States,” he added.
That optimism is now gone. “Trump’s order felt like a bombshell,” Mr. Ahmedzai said. “It shattered our hopes and left us vulnerable to danger once again.”
Noor Habiba, who worked with a U.S.-funded women’s rights group in Kabul before fleeing with her husband and two daughters to Islamabad, said she had hoped until now to make it to the United States in February or March.
“We cannot go back to Afghanistan,” Ms. Habiba said. “There is nothing left for women to live for under Taliban rule.”
Advocates for immigrants are worried that Afghans already in the United States could also be at risk. Migrants allowed into the country under Biden administration programs could be deported quickly with powers that Mr. Trump is giving to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to an internal memo obtained by The New York Times.
After the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Biden administration began a program allowing 76,000 evacuated Afghans to enter the United States for humanitarian reasons, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
As of 2023, more than 90,000 Afghans had settled in the United States, according to Mustafa Babak, an Emerson Collective fellow who is a resettlement expert.
The number of refugees from Afghanistan and other countries admitted under the U.S. resettlement program has fluctuated wildly under Democratic and Republican administrations.
Under President Barack Obama, 85,000 refugees were admitted in total in 2016. In 2020, the last year of Mr. Trump’s first term, the number reached a low of 11,000. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. revived the program, admitting 100,000 refugees last year, the most in three decades.
The program requires applicants to undergo a demanding screening process that includes background checks by the F.B.I. and other agencies, biometric screenings, medical exams, interviews and multiple security reviews.
Zahra, a U.S. Army sergeant, said that five immediate family members who are in hiding in Afghanistan had made it partway through that process when the executive order froze them in place.
She said she had come to the United States from Afghanistan on an academic scholarship in 2016. She enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2021, she said.
“My family is very stressed,” Zahra, 30, who asked that her full name not be published, said in a text message. “We have been hanging to the little hope we had been given.”
She added, “This pause on evacuation flights takes that little hope away and leaves them with a future full of uncertainty.”
Mojo, the U.S. Army paratrooper, said he had feared that Mr. Trump would block resettlement of other refugees, but had believed that he would exempt Afghan allies because of their support of the U.S. mission.
“I still have hope” for an exemption, he said. “I mean, he is my commander in chief.”
