Three Years On: The Continuing Mission to Support our Afghan Allies

By Shala Gafary

Three years ago, in late August 2021, the last US military airplanes departed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. As these overly crowded flights took off, none of the passengers on board knew where they were headed. They hoped to reach the United States. For those who left without their families, they didn’t know when–or if–they would see them again.

They didn’t know what was coming next. They just knew they had to desperately get out of Afghanistan.

For nearly 80,000 Afghan nationals who were evacuated during the Neo combatant Evacuation Operations in August 2021, faith was all they had. Faith that the country and ally many of them served alongside would not let them down. Faith that the kindness from the Americans that they met in Afghanistan wouldn’t disappear just because they had lost a war together. Faith that the values they admired, and even tried to model in their own new nation, were true.

These beliefs are what drew so many of us to act that summer in 2021. Americans who have spent time in Afghanistan often speak of Afghan hospitality. Well, now it was our turn. Human Rights First formed Project: Afghan Legal Assistance (PALA), and we had the chance to return the favor. That summer, both nations cried. But then we got to work.

As the airplanes arrived in the United States, the PALA team was on the move. We met our first new neighbors at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Fort Dix, Fort McCoy, Holloman Air Force Base, and Fort Bliss. We listened to stories of escape, survival, and loss. We heard about distant and long-lost family members in remote corners of the U.S. and worked to empower them through legal workshops and guidance.

In the three years since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, PALA has strived to show Afghans that America’s promises do hold true. With the help of our dedicated pro bono attorneys, volunteers, interpreters, interns, and colleagues, we have conducted 2,123 screening interviews to date. These interviews fed our pro se clinics program, which has assisted 572 individuals in 35 in-person and virtual clinics, including Special Immigrant Visa and asylee Adjustment of Status clinics, work permit clinics, and reparole clinics.

With the help of important partners like Accenture, Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Duane Morris LLP, Google, State Farm, Amazon, and Meta, we were proud to assist Afghan parolees in filing for asylum affirmatively at five locations across the U.S. through our four-part series in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Northern Virginia, and the Bay Area.

As the months passed and we learned of the at-risk Afghans who didn’t make it onto relocation flights, we recognized the need for asylum assistance before the Immigration Court. We met that need with four defensive asylum clinics, including in-person sessions in New York and Washington, DC. We also served 64 individuals in two Change of Venue clinics to ensure that their asylum hearings would be held in the city that they now call home. We appealed an egregious asylum denial before the BIA and helped our detained client win asylum, after nearly 620 days in U.S. government custody.

Over these three years, PALA has assisted thousands of Afghans. Our incredible team–comprised of 1,600 pro bono volunteers–has filed asylum applications benefitting 648 individuals, 565 green card applications, 113 family reunification petitions, 244 work permits, 127 reparole and refugee travel document applications, and 47 Temporary Protected Status applications for our Afghan clients.

In the last year alone, our team was on-site at 16 Afghan Support Centers across the country, including in Phoenix, Sacramento, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Atlanta, Chicago, Raleigh-Durham, Northern Virginia, Detroit, St. Louis, Syracuse, Buffalo and Anaheim. We provided legal guidance, made referrals to local organizations, and registered others for our services. PALA’s reach expanded internationally with visits to U.S. government Afghan processing in Shengjin, Albania, and to a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, housing Afghans. We’ve participated in panels, held workshops, and worked with media to ensure that people didn’t forget the work still left to do.

Our team has lead engagements and meetings with USCIS, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE) team. We continue to co-lead the Afghan Legal Working Group of the Evacuate Our Allies Coalition, now a robust legal community of 550 strong. Our advocacy continues to reach the doors of our nation’s lawmakers, with our ongoing push for an Afghan Adjustment Act, both for those already here and for those whose desperate pleas for help continue to motivate and haunt us.

We are proud that our services have provided much needed assistance to many. To date, 437 of our clients have been granted asylum and are on their way to becoming legal permanent residents in the U.S. Many others are now green card holders. Families have been reunited, children have been born, but sadly, much loss remains.

As we move into year four, it feels like the Taliban of the 1990s all over again. This somber anniversary was marked with news of deepening gender apartheid, with new laws that now make the very sound of a woman’s voice illegal. Men, too, are mandated to grow beards. The playing of music has been banned, and other laws have been enacted that contravene all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The future for Afghanistan offers little hope and I am not sure how much faith remains that things will improve. But now, how we, Americans, treat Afghan refugees and asylum seekers is the true test. Or were they naïve to have faith in us?

During this important election year, Afghanistan may once again be in the headlines, but we we haven’t forgotten about Afghans. We’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, but there is so much more work to do.