American morality requires us to protect Afghans

Four years ago, Americans were angry over the Afghanistan withdrawal. Now, those we welcomed might be forced back.

In November 2021, small-town mayor and Democrat Joe Signorello lost a tough race for state Senate in New Jersey. Such races normally revolve around issues like taxes, schools, and mass transit. But he told me that the No. 1 concern independent voters raised when he knocked on their doors was not any of those. It was what they saw as President Joe Biden’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Of course, his voters knew that state legislators don’t do foreign policy. But they were pissed off that under a Democratic president we’d left behind too many of the allies who’d risked their lives to help Americans. And they took their frustration out on the first Democrat they could.

I thought about Joe’s story last month when I heard that the Trump administration had revoked the humanitarian parole status of thousands of Afghans who made it to the United States after the Taliban takeover. These Afghans are not illegal immigrants. Most were flown to the United States by the U.S. military. Some were soldiers and translators who’d served alongside U.S. troops; some had taken on the Taliban as prosecutors or journalists; many were women who would be prisoners in their homes if they were still in Afghanistan.

And back in 2021, 81% of Americans—including a majority of Republicans—supported bringing them to the United States.

Yet in May, Afghans with temporary protected status, which protected them from deportation as they tried to gain asylum or legal permanent residence, got emails from Homeland Security saying: “It’s time for you to leave the United States. Don't attempt to remain in the United States. The federal government will find you.”

Lawyers hoped those with pending asylum claims would be safe. But on June 3, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Houston arrested a former Afghan army soldier the U.S. military had evacuated from Kabul in 2021 — a man with no criminal record and two kids born in the United States. On June 12, ICE arrested at his asylum hearing in San Diego an Afghan man who’d been a translator for U.S. forces.

Had someone suggested before the election that President Donald Trump would expel America’s Afghan allies back to the Taliban-run hellscape from which we rescued them, they’d have been accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But this seems to be the emerging plan.

Though the Taliban regime continues to hunt down, imprison, and kill its opponents, particularly those who worked for the United States, Trump’s DHS has argued that Afghanistan under the Taliban is stabilizing and becoming safe for refugees to return. No joke: A DHS document justifying revoking protections for Afghans in the United States gushes that “tourists” in Afghanistan “are sharing their experiences on social media, highlighting the peaceful countryside, welcoming locals, and the cultural heritage.”

The potential expulsion of our Afghan allies to face persecution and death in Afghanistan is arguably the most outrageous aspect of Trump’s gut-wrenchingly cruel mass deportation policy. It should also be the part of that policy that is most vulnerable to political counterattack. Yet there has been remarkably little outrage.

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As a member of Congress during the rapid U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, I was getting constant calls from veterans who’d served in the Afghan conflict and from countless other constituents—Democrats and Republicans—urging me to help individual Afghans get to the airport in Kabul and on flights to the United States. Informal support networks sprang up across America, mostly led by veterans, but also by journalists, aid workers, churches, and charities. They raised money, rented charter aircraft, pressed the Biden administration to act, and recruited other nations to provide temporary refuge for evacuees.

Democrats on the Hill urged Biden to do even more than he was doing. Republicans were predictably less diplomatic.

Then-Sen. Marco Rubio slammed Biden for setting a deadline to wrap up the evacuation, tweeting: “Christians & other vulnerable Afghans are telling us thousands will be left behind to face torture & certain death if Biden sticks to his plan to end flights.”

Then-Rep. Mike Waltz (along with many other Republicans) joined me and Rep. Jason Crow in calling the fall of Kabul a “Dunkirk moment” and urging Biden to evacuate not just Afghans who’d worked with our troops but also “those who worked with U.S. based non-governmental organizations, those associated with U.S. institutions such as the American University, as well as journalists, civil servants, and prominent activists.”

Sen. John Thune complained after the evacuation ended that the “tens of thousands of Afghans we abandoned—Afghans who were affiliated with the U.S. government or worked with the U.S. military and whom we promised to protect” were in grave danger.

The plight of these Afghans stirred such strong emotions that two House members, Republican Peter Meijer and Democrat Seth Moulton (both military veterans), flew to Kabul without Pentagon clearance to see the evacuation firsthand. Then-Rep. (now Sen.) Markwayne Mullin tried to enter Afghanistan overland with U.S. Special Forces veterans to rescue vulnerable Afghans. “I’m not Rambo,” he said, adding: “What else do you do when you see a problem? How do you say no if you can be an asset?”

In the end, the Biden administration managed to get 120,000 people out of Kabul before U.S. troops left on Aug. 30 — a remarkable feat, despite (or perhaps aided by) the chaos of the withdrawal. It then quietly worked to rescue thousands more over the next three years. MAGA Republicans have stalled bipartisan legislation to speed the path of these evacuees to permanent residency, but all have remained in the United States with legal status. Many have started successful new lives, and new families, in America.

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The hypocrisy of Republicans who denounced Biden for leaving behind Afghans but now seem OK with sending the ones we saved right back to the Taliban is not surprising.

After all, Mike Waltz is still praying to be confirmed as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations after being fired as national security adviser—he’s not going to offend his boss now. Rubio is desperate to prove he’s a worthy Trump successor—sending Afghans back to what he once said would be “torture & certain death” is a small price to pay to realize his ambition. Thune has his hands full gutting Medicaid. “Not Rambo” Mullin, who was once willing to risk a Taliban bullet to save Afghans, now seems unwilling to risk a Trump “Truth.”

What’s more puzzling is that very few Democrats have spoken out against the impending deportation of our Afghan allies. Perhaps it’s a matter of triage—we’ve seen Afghans legally in the United States arrested by ICE but none has yet been expelled, as Kilmar Abrego Garcia was. Or maybe the conventional wisdom of the political consultants is at play here, arguing that Democrats should focus on the economy over the fate of immigrants from any country. If that’s what’s holding Democrats back, it would be political as well as moral malpractice—as my friend Joe Signorello could tell them.

The evacuation of our brave Afghan allies was the No. 1 story in America for at least a month just four years ago, and Biden’s precipitous loss in popularity began at precisely this point, in part because he was seen as not having done enough to help them. No refugee community in the United States has enjoyed greater public support, including from people who traditionally vote for Republicans, than the Afghans we did welcome at that time, and there is no reason to believe that public opinion on this issue has fundamentally changed. Let’s not confuse the American people’s integrity with Marco Rubio’s.

The argument over Trump’s stupid and inhumane mass deportation policy will be won by telling the stories of its most sympathetic victims and driving wedges within the pro-Trump coalition. Highlighting the impending betrayal of Afghans who fought with and helped Americans should be front and center in that effort.

Tom Malinowski is a former member of Congress from New Jersey who was assistant an secretary of state in the Obama administration.

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