“What do you guys want?” Miller, then President Donald Trump’s top adviser, asked in disbelief, according to one person in the room. “Lots of Iraq and ‘Stans all over the country?”
His words surprised many at the meeting, but they were not accidental. Under Miller’s guidance, several sources told CNN that the Trump administration was taking a slow step toward the entry of all refugees, including allies who helped U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
But the chaos in Kabul, as crowds of Afghans desperately tried to flee the country in late August, was largely due to the slowdown in the previous administration, according to former officials who argue that more could have been allowed. allies in previous years.
The SIV program for Afghan citizens has been plagued with management problems and low annual limits for years that led to the withdrawal of U.S. forces. But while Congress and the Obama and Biden administrations share some of the blame, the Trump administration — specifically Miller, according to former administration officials — did much to hamper the process long before the United States intensified its efforts to withdraw from the country.
That 2018 White House meeting was one of a series of incidents with Miller and his allies in the administration that shocked officials at the time. But Miller, one of Trump’s most scathing immigration advisers, had the president’s ear on refugee policy and wielded considerable power over the issue.
“I can’t underestimate the signal and the impact of the signal that Stephen Miller was sending,” a former official told CNN. “The impact that those people had on the formation of the system in general cannot be underestimated.”
Miller did not respond to any requests for comment.
Among the vocal advocates for the Afghan applicants, former officials said, was James Mattis, then Secretary of Defense and a retired four-star naval general. Several cabinet members and senior personnel attempted to convey that Afghan allies had put their lives on the line of U.S. troops and that refugees in general were one of the most examined immigrants.
But Miller, according to former officials, insisted that more security checks were needed to stay in line with Trump’s policy of “extreme verification,” which stemmed from his ban on traveling to Muslim-majority countries.
“They just flew us”
The Trump administration had a “zero-risk tolerance approach” to the admission of refugees, including those who put their lives on the line of U.S. troops, according to two former administration officials, despite the appeals from officials at a time when Afghan allies were applying for the special immigrant visa program is tightly controlled.
It was “baffling,” a former official said, when he recalled internal White House meetings where Afghans working alongside the U.S. government were sidelined.
“Part of what happened was a change in the way derogatory information was assessed. This was not necessarily done on strict orders, but the people doing the review were encouraged so that people would not be eligible or leave. aside people for further processing, anyone who has ambiguous information, “the former CNN told CNN.
Consequence: Applicants could be sent to the back of the line if questions were asked about information relating to their application, which may delay cases months if not years.
“We wasted time,” the former official added.
Trump also reduced the number of refugees allowed to come to the United States and set a number of limits that restricted those who were eligible to arrive, resulting in historically low incomes. A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee their country. While this may also be true for SIV applicants, this program is designed to provide a pathway to the United States for Afghans working or working on behalf of the U.S. government.
Former officials said they tried to pass it on to the Trump administration, but found themselves out of danger and without resources. Staff-level meetings at the White House on refugees were narrowed down and criticism of Miller’s approach was kept in the dark.
“We were simply asking for justification for the kind of decisions that seemed to us to be made arbitrarily,” a former official said. “We just flew away.”
A program that needs reform
The special immigrant visa program was established in 2009 specifically for Afghan citizens, along with their spouses and unmarried children under the age of 21, who work for the U.S. government in Afghanistan and who face threats to his allegiance to the United States. It was subsequently modified in 2013 to improve efficiency. But challenges remain.
Immigrant special visas “have always been the stepchild of immigration processes,” an administration official told CNN. “Very slow, but little attention to fix.”
However, the program was not designed to run in a pressure cooker, as has been demonstrated in recent weeks. Nor did it take into account a global pandemic, which caused interviews to be paused temporarily.
But refugee and veteran advocates argue that the Biden administration should have done more to prepare for the thousands of Afghan allies facing retaliation, even death, for having worked in the United States before withdrawal.
“What we fear is that if our numbers are correct, if there are about 175,000 people, SIVs, relatives and P1 and P2 applicants left behind,” said Matt Zeller, a veteran of the Afghanistan, in reference to refugee programs open to fleeing Afghans. “We estimate that this could take most of the next ten years. That even if we can get them out alive.”
A senior State Department official told reporters this week that in the early stages of the evacuation the United States tried to prioritize access for final-stage SIV applicants and other categories, but said that the effort failed because “all the credentials we tried to provide electronically were immediately disseminated to the widest possible pool.”
“Every day was a constant effort of improvisation to find out what was going to work that day,” they said. “As we delved deeper into the process, unfortunately we had to start giving priority to the people to whom we had a legal obligation first and foremost, and that was our fellow Americans.”
In late July, the Senate passed the provisions of a bill to streamline the SIV program and expand the number of authorized visas.
“The accelerated effort to clear my legislation with Senator Ernst and quickly prosecute SIV applicants is in part due to the Trump administration’s failure to process SIV applications, which left the program exhausted for years ago, ”Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a program advocate and co-sponsor of the bill, told CNN in a statement, referring to her work with Iowa Republican Joni Ernst.
Some elected Republicans, mostly veterans like Ernst, have expressed their vocation about speeding up the SIV process and helping Afghans working with members of the U.S. service. But while efforts have been made to speed up prosecution to meet the urgent need, Republicans have had little to say about the Trump administration’s guilt.
Many Republican lawmakers and opinion leaders continue to urge caution in the investigation. With Trump out of office and Miller no longer in the White House, concerns about possible security threats from Afghan allies remain a point of conversation in the conservative media, underscoring the influence of the former right-wing administration. .
Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham, for example, warned her viewers on August 16 about a vague threat of “potentially unaffected refugees from Afghanistan.”
“When you have large bags of migrations from places where jihadist ideology is predominant, it can easily create the conditions under which a large number of people, especially young people, can radicalize or move into radical fervor,” he said.