Veterans, volunteers, and advocates who slogged for years to support Afghan allies through former President Joe Biden’s bureaucratic dawdling were abandoned by once staunch conservative supporters after President Donald Trump began his crackdown on Afghan resettlements. We learned that “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” does not apply to Afghans.
Take immigration hawks such as the Center for Immigration Studies’ board member Phillip Linderman. He has spread fear about Afghans in various ways. A chief pillar in Linderman’s early articles has been the contention that “whistleblowers” suggested the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts was not properly vetting Afghans, turned a blind eye to bad actors, and tried to “clear” those with valid security concerns. One problem? CARE has no role in vetting.
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U.S. Refugee Admissions Program applicants are vetted by intelligence community and law enforcement partners “through a centralized and coordinated process established in fiscal year 2022 at the National Vetting Center,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A State Department spokesperson confirmed that SIV hopefuls “must successfully pass an interagency counterterrorism check,” which involves “evaluating key documents and reviewing derogatory information from the Department and interagency partners as well as biometric security vetting.”
In April, I hosted Linderman on my podcast, The Afghanistan Project, to confront his misstatements. He admitted that CARE is not charged with vetting or clearing hits. Linderman also told me that “opening a restaurant in suburban Washington or driving an Uber is not [Afghan refugees’] honorable future. Their honorable future is to recover their country.”
Afghan immigrants have arrived in the United States as engineers, journalists, legal professionals, and ambassadors. Many others work driving trucks, in Amazon warehouses, as security guards, or even as members of the U.S. military. Their work ethic is in the finest U.S. traditions.
Consider the example of “Khan,” an interpreter turned U.S. citizen who supplemented his security job with Uber shifts, working 80 to 90 hours a week to keep his father, a former Afghan intelligence colonel, alive in Afghanistan after the Taliban took control.
Some have died while doing their jobs. In November 2021 and March 2024, Afghans who served with U.S. forces were murdered while driving for ride-share services. Though not a ride-share driver, another Afghan who detected bombs for U.S. Army Green Berets was shot during a parking dispute in April. The immigration hawks always leave these tragedies out.
Linderman’s argument that Afghans should “recover their country” is also wrongheaded. We pulled the rug out from under our allies in our Afghanistan departure, removing the contractor work force that supported the Afghan Air Force, departing from Bagram Airfield in the middle of the night, and doing nothing to stop Taliban forces as they overpowered the Afghan military and came into possession of $7 billion in U.S. weaponry. Sending Afghans to fight such an enemy is the setup for a slaughter. Of course, for Afghan women being raped and murdered in Taliban jails and deprived of their human rights, and for allies being sought and murdered by the organization, the slaughter is already underway.
Linderman’s latest editorial about Afghan vetting follows the heinous shooting of two West Virginia National Guard personnel in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 26. The suspected shooter is an Afghan national.
Filled with circular reasoning and light on actual data, Linderman’s piece offers dehumanizing generalizations about Afghans. Without evidence, Linderman suggests Afghans hold “dramatically different view[s] on morality from the average American,” and emphasizes the “hostility many Afghans hold toward Western values.”
I once belonged to Linderman’s anti-immigration echo chamber. For the last four and a half years, I have been part of the “self-delu[ded],” “self-appointed Afghan rescue machine” Linderman writes of. That “machine” recovered my humanity.
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We who support our Afghan allies are a diverse collection of conservatives, liberals, veterans, and civilians. We put our differences aside because we believe our allies deserve our support. We also, of course, believe in vetting those entering our country and in protecting Americans against radicalization. The difference between Linderman and us is that we use facts and data. I urge the conservative movement to reconfigure its moral compass. We can strengthen our efforts to protect Americans while keeping our word to our allies.
Our honor is at stake. So are our allies’ lives.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the host of The Afghanistan Project.