WASHINGTON — On June 30, my knees shook with raw the adrenaline after I asked my first-ever question to the President of the United States. It was a question I’d asked Border Czar Tom Homan that morning in the blazing Potomac heat of the White House driveway.
Homan dodged, blaming Biden. Trump blamed Biden, too, but also told me that he understood my question and implied that 90% of the Afghan war allies that I was inquiring about would be ‘taken care of.’
As always, the devil is in the details. The Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program has seen a total of nearly 120,000 visas awarded to eligible Afghans since 2009, with an additional 12,000 visas authorized through the end of 2025.
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So who gets to stay? Who are the ten percent who might get sent back to Afghanistan, a country they fled after helping a foreign invader? And who is actually leading the charge in the White House to see the allies we promised to resettle in the U.S. if they kept our combat veterans safe over there?
I still don’t have the answer to the first two questions, as this remains a developing story. The third question I should have more reporting on next week, as my question resulted in an avalanche of testimonials from Afghans living with crippling uncertainty after doing everything expected of them in the resettlement process.
The question also attracted a smattering of palace intrigue about the administration officials — in the West Wing, DHS, and State Department — who want to see our Afghan war allies sent back to the Taliban. More on that next week.
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Whether it’s pressing the president on the fate of Afghan war allies or holding cabinet officials to account on deportation policy, we show up so our readers aren’t left in the dark. This is why our work matters, and why we will keep walking into those rooms until we get answers.
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