According to reports, after halting a U.S. resettlement program for Afghan refugees who had aided the United States in various ways during the U.S. war against the Taliban, the Trump administration is considering sending up to 1,100 of those currently in Camp As-Sayliyah, a former U.S. military base near Doha, Qatar, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and possibly other countries instead of allowing them into the United States. The refugees were evacuated to that camp from Afghanistan after the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2021. Most had been approved for resettlement in the United States after extensive screening. More than 190,000 other Afghan allies have been resettled in the United States.
“This is insane,” Shawn VanDiver, president of San Diego-based advocacy group AfghanEvac, told NBC News. He said that “you do not solve the world’s number one refugee crisis by dumping it into the world’s number two.”
