America owes its Afghan partners more than this By Thomas Warrick and Ambassador Douglas Lute - June 30, 2025
The Washington Post
As the Senate takes up the House-initiated One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it can uphold America’s honor and national interest by protecting the Afghans who served alongside our military and civilians in the two decades following al-Qaeda’s attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
Thousands of these brave Afghans were relocated to the United States when Afghanistan fell in August 2021 to protect them from death, torture or imprisonment by the Taliban. Today, more than 9,600 Afghans in the U.S. face deportation due to termination of the temporary protected status that allows them to live and work here. Even Afghans who can legally stay in the U.S. until their asylum cases or Special Immigrant Visas are processed will be required to pay the government thousands of dollars a year in fees if the Senate accepts the bill as passed by the House.
The United States has always needed local partners in wartime. Deporting our Afghan partners back to the Taliban and subjecting those who stay to crippling fees and charges goes against America’s character and its national security interests. How we treat those who fought and worked alongside us reflects directly on who we are as a people. Many American veterans and civilians who served after 9/11 believe strongly in protecting these men and women not only as a matter of conscience, but also because doing so represents a clear-eyed, hard-power national security imperative.
Many Afghans were paroled hastily into the United States after August 2021 because the U.S. government failed to properly resource the back-office work necessary to process Special Immigrant Visas and also failed to find these Afghans permanent homes here or elsewhere in the two decades since 2001. Bureaucracy and politics, not security concerns, are why thousands remain in limbo in temporary status.
On May 12, the Department of Homeland Security said protected status for Afghans could end because Afghanistan’s economy was “stabilizing” and its security had “improved.” The World Bank, however, reports that Afghanistan’s economy remains a basket case where “poverty and food insecurity remain pressing challenges, exacerbated by high unemployment and restrictions on women’s economic participation.”
Security in Afghanistan might appear improved because the Taliban has cemented its brutal hold over Afghan society. This grip includes imprisoning and torturing political opponents, killing those who fought against it, and coercing Afghan women to stay home while denying them basic rights. We would be naive to believe returnees whose families supported the United States and its allies would be safe under the Taliban. In August 2021, when the last U.S. planes left Kabul, the Taliban began revenge killings, imprisonment and persecution, despite pledging amnesty for former Afghan military personnel. Deportations to Afghanistan would deliver the Taliban’s past adversaries for retribution.
Notably, Iran is now forcing thousands of Afghan refugees to leave or face arrest, fines and deportation. Such an act is in the Iranian regime’s character, not America’s. The suicide in May of Mohammad Amir Tawasoli, a former Afghan pilot, when he received an order from Iranian authorities to leave vividly illustrates the grim reality of what lies in store for others under the Taliban.
For those Afghans not subject to deportation by the end of TPS, language in the House bill imposes a severe burden. Subtitle VII.A would force everyone seeking asylum, protected status, or work permits to pay $2,000 to $4,000 a year in fees until their claims are finally adjudicated — which could take years. Many of our Afghan partners work hard in low-paying jobs, the same honorable way many of our forebears did when they came to America. If our Afghan partners are permittedto stay, the overwhelming majority will contribute just as our families did.
Sending thousands of Afghan partners back to a murderous regime, or impoverishing them here, dishonors our reputation and strengthens our critics and adversaries. Moreover, such a breach of faith will undoubtedly undercut our ability to engage future partners as new challenges emerge around the world.
Before this bill reaches the president’s desk, the Senate can set this issue right by granting lawful status to Afghans who pass security vetting (as those here already have) and dropping the crippling fees on those who are qualified to become American citizens. To do otherwise would stain our nation’s character, dishonor our own veterans and compromise our future national security interests.