Trump to shut down Afghan evacuee camp

President Trump has informed Congress he will shut down the migrant camp in Qatar where the U.S. holds Afghan evacuees before they are allowed to reach America, a senior lawmaker said Wednesday.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, said the government wants to close Camp As Sayliyah by the end of September.

Mr. Meeks decried the move as short-sighted, saying it will hinder American efforts to rescue Afghans who aided the 20-year U.S. war effort and whom the U.S. promised to protect.

“Closing CAS is the latest reckless step by the Trump administration to dismantle every remaining pathway for these allies to safely relocate in the United States. It is a profound betrayal of those who stood with us in Afghanistan, and of America’s word,” the congressman said in a statement.

The move comes amid heightened attention on Afghan evacuees, after one of them — who had worked for the CIA during the war — was charged with the ambush attack on National Guard soldiers patrolling the streets in Washington late last year.

But concerns about evacuees have swirled since the initial chaotic airlift in the summer of 2021 brought tens of thousands of Afghans out of Kabul, and landed them on U.S. soil, without full vetting.

Their presence has become a major political dividing line.

Afghan supporters say the U.S. has a moral obligation to rescue those that assisted America. Others, though, say the evacuation effort is fraught with security risks.

Camp As Sayliyah served as a “lily pad” site, where Afghans who made it out of their home country could be held in an intermediate status and could face vetting before coming to the U.S.

Lily pads were an answer to a previous security fail when thousands of Afghans were flown directly to the U.S. without much vetting at all.

Some 800 people are still at Camp As Sayliyah, according to AfghanEvac, a group that aides evacuees. They are what’s left after the Trump administration halted new arrivals last year.

Shawn VanDiver, president of the group, said in a statement last week that the U.S. offered the 800 remaining evacuees “cash payments” to abandon their goal of reaching the U.S. and instead return to Afghanistan.

“These are not anonymous cases,” he said. “They include Afghan prosecutors and lawyers who put Taliban members in prison, female special operations who fought alongside U.S. forces and the immediate family members of active-duty U.S. service members.”

He said they would face persecution and even death if they went back.

But fears of risks lurking in the Afghan evacuee population remain strong.

During a Senate hearing on the issue Wednesday government investigators recounted the difficulty of vetting Afghans.

Some 36,000 of those brought to the U.S. lacked formal identification. More than 11,000 weren’t able to give their actual birthdates.

The State Department’s inspector general said they spent eight months and were never able to get a final tally on how many Afghans were actually welcomed by the evacuation operation.

Homeland Security’s inspector general said at least 77,000 Afghans were admitted under “parole” authority.

Democrats on the panel worried about abandoning those who did help the U.S. because of the actions of a small number of evacuees.

“The idea that today we’d punish all Afghan allies … for the sins of one is outrageous,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, California Democrat.