Latest news with #SIV
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘I think it's here': Uprooted Afghan family settles in Chicago after being rescued ahead of refugee program suspension
The route to Kilmer Elementary School is about a mile and a half each way for Hamid Azizi, who heads out every afternoon to walk his daughters home. What would seem like a mundane activity for most is a joyous occasion for the father of seven, who arrived in Chicago a little more than a month ago. The 30-minute walk has been Azizi's easiest journey in many years. At the start of the summer of 2021, his family fled its village in Afghanistan, moving quickly and often to evade the Taliban, which swiftly took control after United States armed forces began withdrawing from the region following a 20-year war. 'We were very, very worried about our situation,' Azizi, who speaks Dari, told the Tribune through a translator on a recent Tuesday afternoon at his apartment in the North Side neighborhood of West Ridge. 'Once the Americans left, we could not live in our own city where we grew up or in the other cities that I went to (with U.S. troops) because if anybody knew me and saw me, just to get some credit, they would tell the Taliban, 'This man worked with Americans.' I had to keep moving.' Azizi, 41, is one of thousands of Afghans who were waiting to resettle in the U.S. after being promised safety and relocation for serving alongside American troops as a member of the National Mine Removal Group, or NMRG. He assisted U.S. special forces in various zones in Afghanistan from 2017 until 2021, and received a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, intended to facilitate the resettlement of individuals who have risked their lives by collaborating with the U.S. government. Despite the stamp cemented in his passport for years, Azizi and his family had to find help on their own, and be rescued by organizations such as No One Left Behind after President Donald Trump's inauguration added a sense of urgency. Days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, pausing foreign aid and ending operations of U.N. organizations such as the International Organization for Migration that were vital for processing refugees. The administration also suspended government programs that buy flights for refugees who have SIVs. 'We found ourselves in this interesting situation where you had Special Immigrant Visa holders who were still being processed, but there were no flights for them to travel on because they basically had to buy their own flights,' said Andrew Sullivan, executive director of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit focused on evacuating Afghan and Iraqi SIV applicants to safety. 'For many of these folks, they left their lives behind in Afghanistan. Many of them have been sitting on a State Department processing platform in either Albania or Qatar. It's not like they can work there. They really just don't have the finances to buy flights.' Sullivan said the executive order thwarted thousands of families' prospects for resettlement, a process that often takes years. And many of those families, like Azizi's, have been on the run. Within a month of U.S. troops leaving, Azizi had to flee from Parwan, his home province where the U.S. military had a significant presence. His wife and six daughters —his son, the youngest of seven children, wasn't yet born — kept a few essential items and hid in homes of various relatives in nearby provinces and villages, staying mere weeks or days at a time. '(The relative whose home we were staying in) would say 'don't leave, because (the Taliban) are all over the village. Don't go out, because they're going to get you. You're safe in the house until they find you,'' Azizi recalled. 'But after that, (the relative) said we couldn't stay anymore because it was dangerous for them, and then in two, three days, we went to another relative's house, which was by the river.' With the Taliban rapidly taking over rural areas, Azizi said his family went to the bordering city of Kabul, the country's capital, 'because it had not fallen yet.' Azizi's wife, Fahima, knew a family in Kabul who took them in for a couple months. But on Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban seized control of Kabul, signaling a full recapture of Afghanistan. Civilians soon swarmed Kabul's main international airport hoping to evacuate. Azizi said his family attempted to get on a plane out of Kabul. 'We were one of the people that went to the airport. They were flying everywhere and there were barriers and everything. But my younger daughter, Zhra, stayed behind. I couldn't take it that my daughter won't have a family, won't have a father, a mother. I can't just go and leave her behind,' Azizi said. 'We all went back from the airport. We got her, and from there we stayed but at that time we knew the Taliban said, 'We have forgiven everybody, blanket forgiveness — but not for people who worked for the Americans.'' Will Reno, a professor at Northwestern University, said the images out of Kabul's airport were a stark representation of America's frantic departure from a country it occupied for 20 years. 'That first day or two was chaos when there were people on the airfield grabbing onto the landing gear of the aircraft — that got that very bad, politically, pictures like that,' said Reno, who was a contractor for the Department of Defense while the U.S. was involved in Afghanistan. Reno said in the days following the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban takeover, there was a rush to get high-priority groups such as military intelligence and Afghan special forces that trained American soldiers onto evacuation aircrafts. He explained that President Joe Biden's administration was late in getting a system in place that would effectively vet and process all SIV holders and their families, leaving many, like Azizi, to flee, as the situation with the Taliban became increasingly dangerous for them. Despite the desperate circumstances, Azizi shared fond memories of working with U.S. troops. 'Those times were our best memories; they were like our brothers,' Azizi said. 'We will eat together, either on the floor, or if we find a table, we'll all sit together. If, God forbid, one of us got injured or something like that, we all would get together, be around him like a family. So the relationship was very nice, very beautiful and brotherly.' As a member of the National Mine Removal Group, Azizi's team was the first line of defense for American soldiers, clearing hazardous devices off a battlefield and seeking out snipers trying to target U.S. troops. Azizi said there were several teams of NMRG personnel stationed across the war zone. One of his friends was a guard with the NMRG and immigrated to the U.S. on an SIV years before the war ended, when the U.S. still had an embassy in Afghanistan. In Kabul, Azizi's family continued moving around, hiding in homes of friends and acquaintances. This went on for several months, Azizi said. The family finally found a reason for optimism after connecting with the 1208 Foundation, a nonprofit providing immigration assistance to the surviving members of the NMRG. The organization helped the Azizi family cross into the last leg of its tireless run and eventually paved the way for No One Left Behind to link up with Azizi's family. Eventually, Azizi's family left Kabul for Islamabad, Pakistan, where they lived for 11 months. Through a website launched by No One Left Behind, Azizi was able to fill out an online form to share his visa status and resettlement plans. They didn't have much in terms of money or food, 'but plenty of hope,' Azizi said. Life on the run was especially hard on Fahima, who gave birth to her son, Mohamad, at home without medical care, all while caring for her six other children. In January, No One Left Behind helped Azizi and his family fly to Doha, Qatar, where the organization had sent many Afghans and Iraqis who have already immigrated to the U.S., many through the SIV program, to help facilitate the process. The endgame was America, but Azizi said he knew the 'situation with Trump' was not ideal for refugees seeking asylum. Anticipating even more upcoming limitations for Afghans, and the looming threat of the Trump administration introducing a travel ban that could restrict their entry, No One Left Behind urgently started tapping into existing infrastructure and raised money to buy flights for families and individuals in places such as Albania and Qatar. Between Feb. 1 and March 17, the group said it successfully booked flights for 659 Afghans. And since they began this 'all-out sprint,' Sullivan said, No One Left Behind has spent $1.5 million on 1,300 flights for stranded Afghans with a U.S. visa. 'Life is not easy for people who just come from one place to another place, especially for kids,' Azizi said, looking around his new home. 'We were very, very happy when they told us, especially when we're leaving the (hotel) room and there was a bus to take us to the airport. It was a different feeling … we are really going right now.' After 50 days in Doha, Azizi's family got on a flight to Chicago. No One Left Behind covered the cost of their one-way flights from Doha International Airport to O'Hare International Airport. 'When they told us we are going to take you all, buy tickets for all of you, and you don't have to pay it back — wow, (we asked) how is that going to be possible?' Azizi said. 'We couldn't believe it.' In West Ridge, a volunteer from No One Left Behind comes by weekly to help the family with chores or tasks that require an English speaker. She carries around an English/Dari phrasebook and flips through it regularly, but uses the Google Translate app for faster communication. She helped set up Azizi's three-bedroom apartment off Devon Avenue, furnished with just enough: two comfortable couches, a dining table with six chairs, a bookshelf fashioned into a shoe rack stacked with tiny sandals and sneakers. There isn't a TV, so Azizi's cellphone is typically where his youngest children, Mohamad and Hfsah, watch cartoons on YouTube. Azizi laughed that his phone is not his anymore. Although No One Left Behind offers resettlement assistance to several of the refugees it helps, Sullivan said the group prefers sending its families and individuals to cities in America where they know someone — even just a friend. If there isn't any contact person, the group will send Afghans to areas with a higher volume of Afghan refugees, such as Sacramento, San Francisco or the greater Washington, D.C., area, so there's a sense of community and shared language. In Azizi's case, he got in touch with his friend from the NMRG who resettled in Chicago while the U.S. was still in Afghanistan. The friend invited the family to stay at his home for a couple weeks, then borrowed $3,000 to give to Azizi to secure a month's rent for their apartment. The No One Left Behind volunteer set up a GoFundMe for Azizi's family to help raise money that could go toward rent and basic necessities. The situation for Afghans has become more fragile in some of the places where many have temporarily sheltered, like Azizi's family did in Pakistan. Having hosted millions of refugees, Pakistan has recently increased deportations. And an agreement that made Albania a way station for Afghans expired in March, Sullivan said. Sullivan said for individuals like Azizi who have SIV status, going back to Afghanistan was not an option. 'If they got deported, they would, by definition, go back to a Taliban-controlled immigration checkpoint and fly back into Kabul, where they would be greeted by Taliban immigration authorities who would see their passport and see a U.S. visa in it,' he said. 'We very much worry that it would very much open them up to questioning at the very least, and at the worst, detention, torture and possibly murder from the Taliban.' During the final months of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, an American documentary film crew followed the intimate relationship between American Green Berets and the Afghan officers they trained. Since its release in 2022, the film 'Retrograde' faced criticism for failing to protect the identities of its subjects, leading to the killing of one of the Afghan men by the Taliban. Earlier this month, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that the man's family is suing the producers and distributors of the documentary, including Disney and National Geographic, faulting them for the man's death. Azizi said he was also featured in the film and knew of the man who was killed by the Taliban. Had he not found his way out, Azizi said, he might have faced a similar fate, or would have had to endure the harsh restrictions of Taliban rule. Fahima would not be allowed to work or move freely, and their six daughters wouldn't be allowed post-secondary education. When he drops his daughters off at school and picks them up — both times on foot — he said he often thinks about all the what-if's. His 14-year-old daughter Surya has dreams of becoming a doctor. His youngest daughter, Hfsah, 4, wants to be a hairstylist. Roya, 13, would love to be a teacher. When the girls enrolled at Kilmer, the culture shock and language barrier made going to school dreadful. But now, Azizi said, he watches them run up to their teachers in the morning and looks on as they're immediately enveloped in a hug. 'I'm super proud and full of happiness,' he said. While fleeing from place to place, Azizi said, the family often took pictures to capture the memories of being in each location. Even though circumstances were far from ideal, he said they were together, safe, healthy. It was worth capturing. They have pictures in Pakistan, in Doha, and now in Chicago, as they traverse the new neighborhood curiously. A few weeks ago, Azizi said, as he was taking a selfie with his children, his daughter Sarah, 7, turned to him and asked, 'Baba, where are we going next?' Azizi wiped his tears as he recounted that moment. 'Because we were leaving every city, going to different places, my little girl was thinking maybe America is not home as well,' Azizi said. 'I said, Sarah jaan, we are not going anywhere. I think it's here.'
Chicago Tribune
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
‘I think it's here': Uprooted Afghan family settles in Chicago after being rescued ahead of refugee program suspension
The route to Kilmer Elementary School is about a mile and a half each way for Hamid Azizi, who heads out every afternoon to walk his daughters home. What would seem like a mundane activity for most is a joyous occasion for the father of seven, who arrived in Chicago a little more than a month ago. The 30-minute walk has been Azizi's easiest journey in many years. At the start of the summer of 2021, his family fled its village in Afghanistan, moving quickly and often to evade the Taliban, which swiftly took control after United States armed forces began withdrawing from the region following a 20-year war. 'We were very, very worried about our situation,' Azizi, who speaks Dari, told the Tribune through a translator on a recent Tuesday afternoon at his apartment in the North Side neighborhood of West Ridge. 'Once the Americans left, we could not live in our own city where we grew up or in the other cities that I went to (with U.S. troops) because if anybody knew me and saw me, just to get some credit, they would tell the Taliban, 'This man worked with Americans.' I had to keep moving.' Azizi, 41, is one of thousands of Afghans who were waiting to resettle in the U.S. after being promised safety and relocation for serving alongside American troops as a member of the National Mine Removal Group, or NMRG. He assisted U.S. special forces in various zones in Afghanistan from 2017 until 2021, and received a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, intended to facilitate the resettlement of individuals who have risked their lives by collaborating with the U.S. government. Despite the stamp cemented in his passport for years, Azizi and his family had to find help on their own, and be rescued by organizations such as No One Left Behind after President Donald Trump's inauguration added a sense of urgency. Days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, pausing foreign aid and ending operations of U.N. organizations such as the International Organization for Migration that were vital for processing refugees. The administration also suspended government programs that buy flights for refugees who have SIVs. 'We found ourselves in this interesting situation where you had Special Immigrant Visa holders who were still being processed, but there were no flights for them to travel on because they basically had to buy their own flights,' said Andrew Sullivan, executive director of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit focused on evacuating Afghan and Iraqi SIV applicants to safety. 'For many of these folks, they left their lives behind in Afghanistan. Many of them have been sitting on a State Department processing platform in either Albania or Qatar. It's not like they can work there. They really just don't have the finances to buy flights.' Sullivan said the executive order thwarted thousands of families' prospects for resettlement, a process that often takes years. And many of those families, like Azizi's, have been on the run. Within a month of U.S. troops leaving, Azizi had to flee from Parwan, his home province where the U.S. military had a significant presence. His wife and six daughters —his son, the youngest of seven children, wasn't yet born — kept a few essential items and hid in homes of various relatives in nearby provinces and villages, staying mere weeks or days at a time. '(The relative whose home we were staying in) would say 'don't leave, because (the Taliban) are all over the village. Don't go out, because they're going to get you. You're safe in the house until they find you,'' Azizi recalled. 'But after that, (the relative) said we couldn't stay anymore because it was dangerous for them, and then in two, three days, we went to another relative's house, which was by the river.' With the Taliban rapidly taking over rural areas, Azizi said his family went to the bordering city of Kabul, the country's capital, 'because it had not fallen yet.' Azizi's wife, Fahima, knew a family in Kabul who took them in for a couple months. But on Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban seized control of Kabul, signaling a full recapture of Afghanistan. Civilians soon swarmed Kabul's main international airport hoping to evacuate. Azizi said his family attempted to get on a plane out of Kabul. 'We were one of the people that went to the airport. They were flying everywhere and there were barriers and everything. But my younger daughter, Zhra, stayed behind. I couldn't take it that my daughter won't have a family, won't have a father, a mother. I can't just go and leave her behind,' Azizi said. 'We all went back from the airport. We got her, and from there we stayed but at that time we knew the Taliban said, 'We have forgiven everybody, blanket forgiveness — but not for people who worked for the Americans.'' Will Reno, a professor at Northwestern University, said the images out of Kabul's airport were a stark representation of America's frantic departure from a country it occupied for 20 years. 'That first day or two was chaos when there were people on the airfield grabbing onto the landing gear of the aircraft — that got that very bad, politically, pictures like that,' said Reno, who was a contractor for the Department of Defense while the U.S. was involved in Afghanistan. Reno said in the days following the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban takeover, there was a rush to get high-priority groups such as military intelligence and Afghan special forces that trained American soldiers onto evacuation aircrafts. He explained that President Joe Biden's administration was late in getting a system in place that would effectively vet and process all SIV holders and their families, leaving many, like Azizi, to flee, as the situation with the Taliban became increasingly dangerous for them. Despite the desperate circumstances, Azizi shared fond memories of working with U.S. troops. 'Those times were our best memories; they were like our brothers,' Azizi said. 'We will eat together, either on the floor, or if we find a table, we'll all sit together. If, God forbid, one of us got injured or something like that, we all would get together, be around him like a family. So the relationship was very nice, very beautiful and brotherly.' As a member of the National Mine Removal Group, Azizi's team was the first line of defense for American soldiers, clearing hazardous devices off a battlefield and seeking out snipers trying to target U.S. troops. Azizi said there were several teams of NMRG personnel stationed across the war zone. One of his friends was a guard with the NMRG and immigrated to the U.S. on an SIV years before the war ended, when the U.S. still had an embassy in Afghanistan. In Kabul, Azizi's family continued moving around, hiding in homes of friends and acquaintances. This went on for several months, Azizi said. The family finally found a reason for optimism after connecting with the 1208 Foundation, a nonprofit providing immigration assistance to the surviving members of the NMRG. The organization helped the Azizi family cross into the last leg of its tireless run and eventually paved the way for No One Left Behind to link up with Azizi's family. Eventually, Azizi's family left Kabul for Islamabad, Pakistan, where they lived for 11 months. Through a website launched by No One Left Behind, Azizi was able to fill out an online form to share his visa status and resettlement plans. They didn't have much in terms of money or food, 'but plenty of hope,' Azizi said. Life on the run was especially hard on Fahima, who gave birth to her son, Mohamad, at home without medical care, all while caring for her six other children. In January, No One Left Behind helped Azizi and his family fly to Doha, Qatar, where the organization had sent many Afghans and Iraqis who have already immigrated to the U.S., many through the SIV program, to help facilitate the process. The endgame was America, but Azizi said he knew the 'situation with Trump' was not ideal for refugees seeking asylum. Anticipating even more upcoming limitations for Afghans, and the looming threat of the Trump administration introducing a travel ban that could restrict their entry, No One Left Behind urgently started tapping into existing infrastructure and raised money to buy flights for families and individuals in places such as Albania and Qatar. Between Feb. 1 and March 17, the group said it successfully booked flights for 659 Afghans. And since they began this 'all-out sprint,' Sullivan said, No One Left Behind has spent $1.5 million on 1,300 flights for stranded Afghans with a U.S. visa. 'Life is not easy for people who just come from one place to another place, especially for kids,' Azizi said, looking around his new home. 'We were very, very happy when they told us, especially when we're leaving the (hotel) room and there was a bus to take us to the airport. It was a different feeling … we are really going right now.' After 50 days in Doha, Azizi's family got on a flight to Chicago. No One Left Behind covered the cost of their one-way flights from Doha International Airport to O'Hare International Airport. 'When they told us we are going to take you all, buy tickets for all of you, and you don't have to pay it back — wow, (we asked) how is that going to be possible?' Azizi said. 'We couldn't believe it.' In West Ridge, a volunteer from No One Left Behind comes by weekly to help the family with chores or tasks that require an English speaker. She carries around an English/Dari phrasebook and flips through it regularly, but uses the Google Translate app for faster communication. She helped set up Azizi's three-bedroom apartment off Devon Avenue, furnished with just enough: two comfortable couches, a dining table with six chairs, a bookshelf fashioned into a shoe rack stacked with tiny sandals and sneakers. There isn't a TV, so Azizi's cellphone is typically where his youngest children, Mohamad and Hfsah, watch cartoons on YouTube. Azizi laughed that his phone is not his anymore. Although No One Left Behind offers resettlement assistance to several of the refugees it helps, Sullivan said the group prefers sending its families and individuals to cities in America where they know someone — even just a friend. If there isn't any contact person, the group will send Afghans to areas with a higher volume of Afghan refugees, such as Sacramento, San Francisco or the greater Washington, D.C., area, so there's a sense of community and shared language. In Azizi's case, he got in touch with his friend from the NMRG who resettled in Chicago while the U.S. was still in Afghanistan. The friend invited the family to stay at his home for a couple weeks, then borrowed $3,000 to give to Azizi to secure a month's rent for their apartment. The No One Left Behind volunteer set up a GoFundMe for Azizi's family to help raise money that could go toward rent and basic necessities. The situation for Afghans has become more fragile in some of the places where many have temporarily sheltered, like Azizi's family did in Pakistan. Having hosted millions of refugees, Pakistan has recently increased deportations. And an agreement that made Albania a way station for Afghans expired in March, Sullivan said. Sullivan said for individuals like Azizi who have SIV status, going back to Afghanistan was not an option. 'If they got deported, they would, by definition, go back to a Taliban-controlled immigration checkpoint and fly back into Kabul, where they would be greeted by Taliban immigration authorities who would see their passport and see a U.S. visa in it,' he said. 'We very much worry that it would very much open them up to questioning at the very least, and at the worst, detention, torture and possibly murder from the Taliban.' During the final months of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, an American documentary film crew followed the intimate relationship between American Green Berets and the Afghan officers they trained. Since its release in 2022, the film 'Retrograde' faced criticism for failing to protect the identities of its subjects, leading to the killing of one of the Afghan men by the Taliban. Earlier this month, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that the man's family is suing the producers and distributors of the documentary, including Disney and National Geographic, faulting them for the man's death. Azizi said he was also featured in the film and knew of the man who was killed by the Taliban. Had he not found his way out, Azizi said, he might have faced a similar fate, or would have had to endure the harsh restrictions of Taliban rule. Fahima would not be allowed to work or move freely, and their six daughters wouldn't be allowed post-secondary education. When he drops his daughters off at school and picks them up — both times on foot — he said he often thinks about all the what-if's. His 14-year-old daughter Surya has dreams of becoming a doctor. His youngest daughter, Hfsah, 4, wants to be a hairstylist. Roya, 13, would love to be a teacher. When the girls enrolled at Kilmer, the culture shock and language barrier made going to school dreadful. But now, Azizi said, he watches them run up to their teachers in the morning and looks on as they're immediately enveloped in a hug. 'I'm super proud and full of happiness,' he said. While fleeing from place to place, Azizi said, the family often took pictures to capture the memories of being in each location. Even though circumstances were far from ideal, he said they were together, safe, healthy. It was worth capturing. They have pictures in Pakistan, in Doha, and now in Chicago, as they traverse the new neighborhood curiously. A few weeks ago, Azizi said, as he was taking a selfie with his children, his daughter Sarah, 7, turned to him and asked, 'Baba, where are we going next?' Azizi wiped his tears as he recounted that moment. 'Because we were leaving every city, going to different places, my little girl was thinking maybe America is not home as well,' Azizi said. 'I said, Sarah jaan, we are not going anywhere. I think it's here.'
India.com
28-04-2025
- Health
- India.com
These animals are most likely to be affected by HIV AIDS; dogs and cats show symptoms like...
HIV AIDS in animals: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection was first identified in Central Africa. Here, the virus initially spread among chimpanzees. While chimpanzees are the only animals reliably infected with HIV, other animals like gibbons, mice, rabbits, baboons, and rhesus monkeys have been shown to be infected under certain conditions, but they haven't developed the disease. Important animal models for HIV research include great apes, Asian monkeys with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), and infections of ungulates and cats with HIV-related lentiviruses. From chimpanzees, this virus spread to humans. In the late 18th century, HIV began to spread from chimpanzees to humans. The virus found in chimpanzees of the same species is called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV). It is said that when humans hunted chimpanzees for food, they came into contact with the blood of infected chimpanzees, which is how the virus spread to humans. In cats, this virus is referred to as Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV), which is similar to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Its symptoms vary. After an initial infection, some cats may appear healthy for several years. Later, this virus begins to weaken the nervous system. FIV is primarily transmitted through biting from infected cats. Its symptoms include fever, weight loss, lethargy, loss of appetite, inflammation of the gums and mouth. Other symptoms are chronic or recurrent infections in the eyes, skin, upper respiratory tract, or bladder. Some cats may experience neurological disorders like seizures or behavioural changes.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'We're Breaking Our Promises': Afghans Who Helped US at Risk of Deportation as Trump Ends Protections
Afghans who fled the Taliban, including some who helped the U.S. military during America's 20-year war there, are facing the risk of deportation as the Trump administration moves to end legal protections for them. One program called temporary protected status, or TPS, that Afghans have used to reside in the U.S. and escape Taliban threats to their lives will expire next month, while the Trump administration already ended another program called "parole" and sent out mass notices telling those with parole to self-deport. While Afghans who came to the U.S. during the official military evacuation are supposed to be exempt from the parole termination, at least a couple accidentally got termination notices. Furthermore, many came after the evacuation and so are not exempt. Read Next: Independent Study Raises Alarm About Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma at Malmstrom Air Force Base The twin developments with TPS and parole have stoked fear, confusion and anger among both the Afghans who risked their lives to help the military and the veterans who have scrambled to protect Afghans since the ignominious end of the war in 2021. "We're breaking our promises," said Zia Ghafoori, a former Afghan interpreter who worked with Army Special Forces before coming to the U.S. in 2014 and now runs a nonprofit that aids other former interpreters. "We promised these people that if you stood with me, we will stand with you. But where are those promises today?" The moves come amid the Trump administration's broad immigration crackdown that includes militarizing the southern border, shipping migrants to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, and cutting off legal immigration pathways. Despite President Donald Trump campaigning heavily on criticizing former President Joe Biden's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Afghans have been caught in Trump's anti-immigration policies since his first day in office in January when he suspended refugee admissions. After the Taliban overran Kabul in 2021 amid the withdrawal, the military evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans who feared for their safety under Taliban rule. But tens of thousands more whose lives the Taliban has threatened were left behind, including Afghan allies who supported the U.S. war effort. While Afghans who worked with the military are eligible to come to the U.S. through the Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, program, a yearslong backlog in that program prompted many Afghans to use other avenues to stay in the country while their SIV or asylum applications are being processed. One of those avenues was TPS, which the Biden administration announced in 2022 it was offering to Afghans because their home country was experiencing "a collapsing public sector, a worsening economic crisis, drought, food and water insecurity, lack of access to health care, internal displacement, human rights abuses and repression by the Taliban, destruction of infrastructure, and increasing criminality." TPS protects migrants from deportation and provides them work authorization if they cannot return to their home country because of armed conflict, natural disaster or other dangerous conditions. About 9,600 Afghans were covered by TPS as of September, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the Trump administration is allowing TPS to expire for Afghans on May 20, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed this month after the decision was first reported by The New York Times. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem "determined that Afghanistan no longer continues to meet the statutory requirements for its TPS designation and so she terminated TPS for Afghanistan," department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. The statement provided no further explanation about what's changed in Afghanistan that makes it ineligible for TPS. "Afghanistan today is still reeling from Taliban rule, economic collapse and humanitarian disaster. Nothing about that reality has changed," Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, said in a statement earlier this month. "Terminating protections for Afghans is a morally indefensible betrayal of allies who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us to advance American interests throughout our country's longest war." A similar move by the Trump administration to end TPS for Venezuelans has been temporarily halted by a federal court. Meanwhile, some other Afghans who grew frustrated with the bureaucratic delays tried to claim asylum by coming through the U.S. southern border. The Biden administration allowed them to enter the country while their asylum claims were being processed by granting them parole. It's unclear exactly how many Afghans entered that way, but more than 900,000 migrants in total were paroled into the country through the Biden-era CBP One app. But, a couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration started sending mass emails to those who used the CBP One app telling them their parole was being revoked and they needed to self-deport. The emails went far and wide, seemingly with little verification that they were going to their intended recipients or migrants whose parole was actually revoked. For example, several U.S. citizens have reported getting the emails, apparently because they are immigration attorneys whose clients listed their lawyers' email addresses on contact forms. The DHS, in an unsigned statement, confirmed "some" migrants "received formal email notifications from the Department of Homeland Security." Still, it added, Afghans who were paroled during Operation Allies Welcome, the official name of the 2021 evacuation, "are not subject to this termination at this time." But at least two Afghans who were part of Operation Allies Welcome received the termination notices, the Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing last week. The administration has sent "retraction" notices to them, it added in the filing. Mistakes like that, though, have sowed widespread, paralyzing distrust and fear about the notices. "How are people supposed to know if it really applies to them?" said Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who leads #AfghanEvac, which has helped resettled Afghans since the evacuation. "It's so confusing. It's so confusing." "I absolutely think the confusion is part of the point," he added. Ghafoori said he has fielded numerous calls from Afghans panicked about the end of their parole or TPS designation in his capacity as the head of the Interpreting Freedom Foundation. In one call, Ghafoori said, a former Afghan commando's children and wife were crying in the background as the man, who came through the southern border and received a parole termination email, pleaded for help. "They kept begging me, like, 'Where can we go? Please. Somebody needs to save us,'" Ghafoori said. The only advice Ghafoori said he has been able to offer is to consult a lawyer, but for many Afghans, that is easier said than done. "They left everything behind. They have no penny to pay for their legal fees," Ghafoori said. Advocates have been appealing to the Trump administration to reverse course. This week, #AfghanEvac sent a letter to the DHS, the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House in part calling on the administration to provide formal guidance for Afghans in the U.S. to "prevent wrongful deportation or denial of services," rescind the parole termination notices, and make clear that those with pending asylum claims do not need to leave. Christian leaders have also been pushing specifically for protections against deportation for Afghan Christians. Administration officials have so far brushed off those appeals. "We didn't end [TPS] proactively. It expired," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week when asked whether Trump was considering any exemptions for Afghans who face death or torture if they return to Afghanistan. Leavitt also said Afghans can apply for asylum -- which is what the CBP One app that the Trump administration scuttled was meant to help facilitate. Coupled with impending cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Trump administration's disregard for Afghans has left veterans reeling, VanDiver said. "If they're cutting all these jobs at the VA, how are we supposed to get our care, especially in a time where there's heightened tensions, a lot more stress and serious moral injury associated with how we're treating our Afghan allies?" VanDiver said. "The overarching message that I'm getting as a veteran is that they like to use us for political points, but they don't really care what we have to say." Related: Afghans Who Helped US War Effort Snarled by Foreign Aid Freeze
The Hindu
24-04-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
DPH makes arrangements for vaccination of Haj pilgrims
The Directorate of Public Health (DPH) has announced that arrangements have been made for the vaccination of persons undertaking the Haj in the coming days. As many as 5,675 of the 1,75,025 people are travelling from Tamil Nadu, according to the Director of Public Health T.S. Selvavinayagam. The Union government had provided 8,025 doses of QMMV (quadrivalent meningococcal meningitis vaccine) and 1,452 doses of SIV (seasonal influenza vaccination) for 2025. As per the recommendations of the Haj committee, 41 health screening, fitness verification, and vaccination camps had been established in 37 districts, and they will function from April 24 till May 5. Vaccinations will be provided from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m. Haj pilgrims aged 3 to 85 will be administered the QMMV and oral polio vaccines. Persons above the age of 65 will be administered the SIV and QMMV and oral polio drops. The embarkation point for all Haj pilgrims is the international airport in Chennai. A help desk will be established by the Chengalpattu district health officer, Dr. Selvavinayagam said.
