The Trump administration says it's pausing and reviewing a host of programs for refugees, including those for Afghan nationals who worked with the U.S. military while troops were stationed there.
The changes came after a D.C. shooting left a National Guard soldier dead and another wounded. The suspect is an Afghan man who worked with the CIA while in Afghanistan and was granted asylum in the U.S. this year.
The administration has announced it’s reviewing all green card applications and approvals for 19 countries, including Afghanistan.
Bill Richardson is a retired Mesa police officer and a U.S. military veteran who helped bring members of a female Afghan platoon to Arizona and other states.
“I don’t think the government is going to find anything new, but it’s creating an environment of fear for the women — that they could arbitrarily be detained and deported back to Afghanistan,” he said.
Richardson says all 39 women from the platoon who resettled in the U.S. have asylum now, but not everyone has green cards yet.
The administration also says it’s pausing affirmative asylum applications nationwide, and suspending all immigration applications for Afghans specifically — from work permits and green cards, to the Special Immigrant Visa program, which provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship to foreign nationals who worked with the U.S..
Martin Quezada is an attorney and the civil rights director for the Council on American Islamic Relations in Arizona.
“This was a horrible incident that happened — that individual should be prosecuted and investigated for an individual act that that individual committed. But to place an entire blame on a collective community is indeed a collective response to an individual incident,” Quezada said.
State data shows about 3,800 Afghan refugees have been resettled in Arizona since 2021.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The story has been updated to correct that Bill Richardson is a former Mesa police officer.
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In a weeklong series, KJZZ looks at Arizona’s connection to the Japanese internment policies that were instituted following Pearl Harbor, and how it ties into the broader story of racialized public policy. Gabriel Pietrorazio joined The Show for a closer look at the series. -
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