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Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:48] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted. There are huge communities of Afghans and Afghan-Americans across California, including in cities like Fremont and Sacramento. And thousands of those families are still waiting on the U.S. to make good on its promise, to support those who helped the American war effort in Afghanistan. But now, the Trump administration is leaving thousands at risk of deportation back to the home country they escaped by ending temporary protected status for an estimated 8,000 people from Afghanistan by July 12.
Harris Mojadedi [00:01:38] These are folks that fought against the Taliban. These are people who are really, you know, enemy number one for the Taliban, and so to send them back to deport them would really be a death sentence.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:51] Today, what ending TPS means for Afghans in the Bay Area.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:03] I know when President Trump was running for office, he always promised that he would target what is known as temporary protected status. What is TPS and why was it a target of President Trump’s?
Rachael Myrow [00:02:17] Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, is a humanitarian program established by Congress in 1990.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:28] Rachael Myrow is senior editor for KQED’s Silicon Valley Desk.
Rachael Myrow [00:02:34] It allows foreign nationals here in the U.S. To stay here in the U S. for a stretch, if their home country is experiencing a serious crisis. Let’s say war or environmental disasters like a hurricane. Someone with TPS can stay in the US and live and work legally but it’s temporary protected status. There’s no pathway to permanent residency or citizenship and the federal government has to decide, gets to decide, to re-up the status for each country or not on a periodic basis. Just to give you a sense here, countries we have issued TPS for include Venezuela, Ukraine, Haiti, El Salvador, and of course, Afghanistan. Trump administration officials argue conditions in these countries have improved enough to justify ending these TPS programs. But in most of these cases, Ericka, that’s the politically desirable conclusion, and the facts to fit the argument just make no sense.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:45] As you mentioned, there are plenty of countries under temporary protected status, but what made Afghanistan unique in this list that you just mentioned?
Rachael Myrow [00:03:57] Not to put too fine a point on it, but the United States, its military, its federal officials were in Afghanistan following September 11th. A couple of decades for several presidential administrations, Democratic and Republican, and as a function of that stay in that country, there were hundreds of thousands of individuals on various levels and various capacities. Supporting the U.S. War effort against the Taliban, which rules in Afghanistan today. They put their lives on the line. And given how violent and repressive the Taliban regime is, they also put their families’ lives on the line.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:52] And, I mean, there are, in fact, and has been for a long time, many Afghans already here and building a life here in California and the Bay Area, right?
Rachael Myrow [00:05:04] There have been several waves of Afghan immigration since basically the Soviets invaded right in 1979. So we’re talking about a subset of the population of roughly 200,000 Afghans who came to the U.S. Since the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:32] Right, and I know there was so much anxiety already, even before Trump was inaugurated. There was this huge fear around what would happen to this slice of immigrants who are here under temporary protected status. And Trump announced earlier this month that he would actually end TPS for certain immigrants. What happened, Rachel? Or what exactly was announced?
Rachael Myrow [00:06:00] So what happened earlier this month is that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued a notice terminating TPS for Afghans. In order to make this announcement, the way that the law works, she has to argue that things have gotten better in Afghanistan. In this notice, she argues that tourism from China is on the upswing as the number of kidnappings is on the downswing. Also, the number people needing humanitarian aid in Afghanistan has dropped recently from more than 29 million people to under 24 million people. I should add, our own State Department says it’s not safe to visit Afghanistan, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is closed, and the U-S government cannot provide assistance to U. S. Citizens, let alone returning Afghan nationals. For this particular slice of the population, you know, they have to have a little bit of notice. It’s not much notice. July 12th appears to be the deadline for this group of people.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:22] To return to Afghanistan. Yeah. What does this mean for families and Afghans here in the Bay Area under TPS?
Rachael Myrow [00:07:33] It’s just panic, terror, chaos. I imagine a lot of people, hopefully, are talking to their immigration attorney about what this means for family members here in the U.S., as well as family members outside the U.S.
Fouzia Azizi [00:07:54] There is a sense of trauma, there is a sense of anxiety, mental health is to the next level.
Rachael Myrow [00:08:01] Fouzia Azizi is Director of Refugee Services at Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay
Fouzia Azizi [00:08:08] Since 2008, the majority of the client that we have served under the resettlement program being folks from Afghanistan, particularly the ones that are coming under special immigrant visa orders.
Rachael Myrow [00:08:24] Fouzia left Afghanistan in 1994. She spent some time in Pakistan before coming here in the mid-aughts, and she’s now directing these refugee services, which we haven’t gotten into this yet, but the funding has been cut for refugee services not just at Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay, but for all sorts of resettlement agencies all over the country.
Fouzia Azizi [00:08:53] On January 24th we received no work order and by then we had many families in different phases of their resettlement journey. I think the greater impact happened to those families that were scheduled to come and their flight got canceled. So the family members, I had minor children be reuniting with parents. That was a really, really heartbreaking situation because we had to call the parents and say that unfortunately your three minor kids will not come next week. For community created a lot of fear, anxiety and unknown future because there is so much uncertainty I do not know what future holds for us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:51] Coming up, the risks ahead for TPS recipients. Stay with us.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:49] What is the fear for people who are now at risk of being sent back to Afghanistan?
Rachael Myrow [00:10:58] All sorts of people would have a hard time living under the Taliban in Afghanistan today. This includes children, women, religious and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people.
Harris Mojadedi [00:11:12] I have family members that are a part of this wave of refugees who they don’t know what to do. Where do they go? They’re being told to self-deport. What does that mean?
Rachael Myrow [00:11:23] Harris Mojadedi is an Afghan community advocate. He was born in the U.S. to refugee parents.
Harris Mojadedi [00:11:30] I was born in Fremont, which, you know, is sort of known now as Little Kabul and really just a child of Afghan refugees, someone who’s grown up in the system and who has been translating for my family my whole life.
Rachael Myrow [00:11:43] If this was him returning to Afghanistan, you know, like he’d be in for a really tough time. It doesn’t take a news article for the Taliban to be aware of people and their families who had any connection whatsoever with the U.S. Military during the American war in Afghanistan.
Harris Mojadedi [00:12:06] And to turn them back to deport them right now really would be a death sentence because these are folks that fought against the Taliban. These are people who are really enemy number one for the Taliban
Rachael Myrow [00:12:19] Maybe they didn’t go out on missions, but might have been scouts or translators. So people like Harris, he very much has a sense that he has to speak for the wider community the same way he had to speak for his parents when he was a little boy growing up in the Bay Area.
Harris Mojadedi [00:12:43] It is hard for me to get, whether it’s even my own family members that are under TPS or, you know, family friends to speak to anyone because they’re so afraid, Rachael. They’re terrified. The East Bay in particular, you now, we have contributed to this community and to our society and, you no, we still, we need that support.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:08] What, though, has been the broader reaction to this news, Rachael?
Rachael Myrow [00:13:16] There are so many military veterans, Ericka, who through one organization or another feel profoundly that this question of whether we stand by our allies after the war is over is a moral question.
Shawn VanDiver [00:13:33] Look, we thought that President Trump was going to be a champion for Afghans. And now it’s become clear that what we thought were unintended consequences back in January was part of our overall strategy to throw our wartime allies under the bus.
Rachael Myrow [00:13:46] Shawn VanDiver, who is the founder of Afghan Evac, this organization based in San Diego, is not unlike Harris Mojadedi, somebody who from his position is in a position to help Afghans.
Shawn VanDiver [00:14:05] I’ve had the privilege to work on this now across two administrations, and I think veterans and frontline civilians and everybody who’s involved in this are shocked at how it seems like these folks are just being thrown away, and we need Congress to step up and do something.
Rachael Myrow [00:14:23] He has been getting so much information out there. He has going to Capitol Hill, at least during the Biden administration, to plead the case for Afghan refugees. He himself is a veteran of the U.S. War in Iraq.
Shawn VanDiver [00:14:42] I got involved in this work because I remember what it was like watching ISIS storm through Iraq, Father’s Day weekend of 2016.
Rachael Myrow [00:14:51] And for Shawn VanDiver, you can hear it when he talks.
Shawn VanDiver [00:14:54] We try to simplify it as much as possible. If you stood with the United States, you deserve this chance.
Rachael Myrow [00:15:02] As far as many veterans see, it is up to Republican lawmakers to find a way to plead with the Trump administration, find a to get the ear of President Trump.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:18] After the Trump administration signaled it would terminate temporary protected status for Afghans earlier this year, a Maryland-based immigration rights organization filed a federal lawsuit, alleging the suspension of TPS for Afgans was motivated by racial animus. The group is seeking a court order to declare the TPS termination unlawful. But if they’re unsuccessful, Afghans here under TPS are staring down a July 12 deadline.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:54] It sounds like there’s people like Sean and people like Fouzia who are really trying to help these folks out. And I mean, coming back to Fouzia, I mean what is being done to ease that anxiety and bring a sense of normalcy through all of this?
Rachael Myrow [00:16:14] For people like Fouzia, this is personal. This is about, you know, a wider sense of family.
Fouzia Azizi [00:16:23] During month of Ramadan, just as a spiritual support groups, kind of creating a space, just creating a place for people to talk and share their journeys and stress.
Rachael Myrow [00:16:37] The folks at JFCS are still setting up community events. There was a recent one attached to Mother’s Day and the idea was to help Afghan women just have a moment of peace and celebration and good food and chit chat.
Fouzia Azizi [00:16:56] They can socialize and they can learn from each other, make connection and somehow decrease isolation.
Rachael Myrow [00:17:06] That said, I think this is a community. Is looking out for each other, is trying to be as supportive as possible, looking to others to help, but also finding the resources, the emotional resources within themselves to keep going because what choice do you have?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:36] Rachael, thank you so much for your reporting on this story and for sharing it with us. I appreciate it.
Rachael Myrow [00:17:43] Oh, of course. Thank you, Ericka.
