Statement for the Record on the Afghan Parole Program
Committee: U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration; Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism
Hearing: Biden’s Afghan Parolee Program – A Trojan Horse with Flawed Vetting and Deadly Consequences
Date: January 14, 2026
Submitted by: Refugees International, Afghan American Foundation
Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee:
Between 1996 and 2001, Afghanistan was governed by the Taliban, then an unrecognized but highly centralized regime that imposed an extreme social order, ruling primarily through clerics and armed militias rather than civilian institutions. Under heavy international sanctions and with virtually no technocratic bureaucracy, the Taliban remained diplomatically isolated and incapable of delivering economic recovery nor a viable future for the Afghan people. Girls’ education was largely banned nationwide, women were barred from most work and severely restricted in their movement, and public life was stripped of music, television, and most sports. Punishments were carried out publicly and included beatings, amputations, and executions. At the same time, humanitarian conditions were catastrophic – millions faced chronic hunger amid drought and economic collapse, with widespread shortages of basic necessities such as food, water, and medicine. Regrettably, many of these conditions have resurfaced following the United States withdrawal in 2021.
For two decades, the United States pursued a political and development mission in Afghanistan at enormous cost in American lives and resources. Alongside combat operations, sustained investments in education, healthcare, and human rights produced measurable gains across the country. Afghanistan’s education system expanded dramatically, moving from a period in which girls’ public schooling had been effectively shut down to one in which, by 2020, roughly nine million students were enrolled—up to three and a half million of them girls. Literacy rates among children, including girls, rose substantially over the same period. Health outcomes also improved. The expansion of clinics and the training and deployment of female health workers enabled millions of women and girls to access essential care for the first time. Life expectancy increased, while infant mortality fell by nearly half. These development gains were closely intertwined with advances in human rights and public participation. Millions of Afghans—many of them women—entered civic and public life as teachers, doctors, journalists, civil society leaders, and elected officials. Independent media and civil society organizations expanded, and space opened, however imperfectly, for public debate, political participation, and accountability.
Many of these gains would not have been possible without the close partnership between American forces and Afghan allies, some of whom came to the United States and became valuable community members. For two decades, Afghans stood with the U.S. mission in the belief that it offered a path away from repression and extremism. Afghans supported and sacrificed alongside American service members and civilians so that their children could return to school, their wives and daughters could become doctors, engineers, journalists, and public servants, and their country could begin building institutions capable of sustaining a more just and stable democratic future. That shared project created not only progress in Afghanistan, but trust, personal relationships, and migration pathways to the United States for certain Afghans. Congress established the Special Immigrant Visa program in 2009 to provide a viable pathway to safety in the United States for Afghans who supported the U.S. mission, were subject to extensive vetting, and faced serious threats as a result of their service. Afghans who arrived in the United States in the 2010s, as SIVs or who sought asylum in fear of return to Afghanistan ruled by the Taliban, have become integrated members of our communities, establishing businesses, raising U.S. born-children, working as professionals and continuing to support the U.S. mission of advancing human rights in Afghanistan.
Following the United States withdrawal, interpreters, women leaders, journalists, and partners of U.S. organizations in Afghanistan were placed at acute risk of reprisal by the Taliban. Indeed, following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the remaining hope for many Afghan allies was the promise, explicit and implicit, that the U.S. would stand by those who stood with it. The U.S. prioritized evacuation and resettlement through the US Refugee Admissions Program of these individuals who met specific eligibility requirements and passed security and medical screenings. Afghans were also evacuated to U.S. military bases and paroled into the United States through Operation Allies Welcome. Although different policy choices could have been made regarding the operational execution and processing of Afghans on overseas bases and in the United States, the screening and vetting procedures were rigorous to protect our national security.
At the outset of Operations Allies Welcome, community-based organizations– such as two in Virginia, one founded by veterans, volunteers, and neighbors called NovaRaft and another founded by Afghan-Americans whose families had arrived as refugees in the 1980s and 1990s called Fresh Start Refugee Assistance–stepped in to resettle newly arrived Afghans. They secured apartments, enrolled children in school, provided English and IT classes, helped obtain drivers licenses, and connected people with jobs. Meanwhile, in Nebraska, Jason Malloy, a U.S. military veteran who had worked closely with Afghan interpreters, began volunteering with the Afghan-American community in Omaha. He helped newly paroled Afghan evacuees with airport pickups, transportation to medical and DMV appointments, and school enrollment for their children. He remains in touch with many of the families he supported and describes them as among the hardest-working and most grateful people he has known. For him, and for the many thousands of our veterans, supporting Afghan allies is not an act of charity, but a continuation of service and a fulfillment of the United States’ moral obligation to those who stood with it.
Even so, tens of thousands of Afghan allies were left behind, either hiding across Afghanistan or stranded in precarious conditions in neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. Many Afghans fled in hopes of accessing parole, refugee or SIV pathways, but have since faced mistreatment, detention, and/or forcible return to the Taliban. The Trump administration has not only cut off access to refugee resettlement in the United States for Afghans abroad at risk of return to persecution, it has also stopped processing asylum applications by Afghans in the United States, begun detaining Afghan asylum seekers for deportation, and called for re-examination of resettled Afghan refugees. This betrays not only Afghan allies, but also the many Americans who generously welcomed them to communities across the country.
There are several stories of our Afghan allies now at risk, including from those below, using pseudonyms to protect their identity.
Hajera worked on a USAID-supported medical project that provided life-saving care to pregnant Afghan women. Massoud worked as an interpreter with U.S. military training programs for the Afghan National Army. Massoud, Hajera, and their three children were unable to board U.S. evacuation flights in August 2021. They remained in hiding in Kabul for several months and then moved to Mazar-e-Sharif, hoping it would be safer. They repeatedly sought evacuation options, but months passed without a viable pathway. Without any other option, they traveled first to Brazil, then to Mexico, and entered the United States through the CBP One process. They are now in the U.S. with a pending asylum case. Under the new policies, their case has been suspended.
Fatima was a police officer in Afghanistan. She escaped the Taliban with her elderly mother and sister. They made their way through the Darien Gap and eventually to Mexico, where for most of 2024 they waited for a CBP One appointment, first in Mexico City, and then, after being bussed southward by Mexican immigration authorities, in Villahermosa. Once they received their appointment, they flew to Tijuana, were screened and paroled for two years by CBP officers at the port of San Ysidro, joined their friends and relatives in Sacramento, and applied for asylum. Like all others who arrived via CBP One appointments, they received a notice sent en masse terminating their parole regardless of the specifics of their individual cases. Their immigration court hearing, which had been scheduled for a date in June, disappeared and has been listed as “pending” in the immigration court system ever since. Fatima wrote to Refugees International asking whether they would be detained when they go to their regular check-in with ICE.
These are just a few of the tens of thousands of Afghan allies who took extraordinary risks to support U.S. objectives and help rebuild their country. Fatima and Hajera are now at risk of being deported back to Afghanistan. This is unconscionable. It would return two women who supported U.S. objectives to a country where the state enforces gender apartheid through a tightening national system of bans and restrictions designed to remove women and girls from public life—blocking education, employment, movement without a male guardian, and participation in public spaces and civil society. For humanitarian actors, the result is an operating environment where women’s visibility and agency are treated as violations, and where the impact of donor withdrawal is magnified by deliberate repression. Across the country, the Trump administration is also arbitrarily detaining law-abiding Afghans who arrived in the United States more than a decade ago and have active asylum cases. These are parents, elderly, business owners, and community members, who are now deeply rooted in their neighborhoods, paid taxes, and call America home. These actions do not make our country safer. They are tearing families apart and punishing our Afghan allies using pretext that has no relationship to their cases nor respects their longstanding contributions.
The decision by the Trump administration to dismantle U.S. foreign assistance and cut humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has worsened the situation. According to forthcoming research by Refugees International, these cuts have had a disproportionate impact on women and girls. Before the 2025 aid cuts, a fragile ecosystem still sustained essential services for women and girls—GBV response, maternal health care, and mental health and psychosocial support. These services were often delivered by women-led organizations using small, flexible grants and quiet community networks. The cuts abruptly severed that lifeline: shelters closed, mobile clinics stopped, safe spaces vanished, experienced staff were lost, and referral pathways for survivors collapsed. As funding dried up, predictable harms intensified—forced and early marriage, worsening maternal risk, and exploitation.
Our withdrawal has not only imperiled the many Afghans who trusted the promises we made; it has also, devastatingly, returned the nation to conditions alarmingly similar to those that existed before American troops first arrived in September 2001. This double-edged moral injury is felt not only by those we left behind, but also by the men and women of our armed forces who sacrificed their lives and livelihoods in service of promises that the Trump Administration and Congress has now, knowingly, broken.