Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says he expects the United States to resettle more than 50,000 Afghan evacuees, including U.S. citizens, permanent legal residents, visa holders, special immigrant visa (SIV) applicants and other people at risk, including “journalists and vulnerable women and girls.”
Before landing here, many have been relocated to US and NATO bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Spain and Italy. According to federal data obtained by CBS News, nearly 34,000 Afghan evacuees remained at these bases as of Friday.
Currently, a military base in Qatar hosts approximately 6,400 evacuated people, while two bases in Germany house a total of 16,800 evacuated people, most of any overseas base. In the past two days, approximately 6,000 more people have been relocated to the U.S. from CBS News reported for the first time the data.
Most evacuees staying in Europe will head to the United States, according to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. Those chosen to be relocated to the United States have been completing security checks at overseas sites.
General Tod Wolters, the head of the U.S. European Command, said as of Thursday, 58 people need additional security processes, but he believes they will all be settled.
According to Wolters, only one individual in the thousands who have come to Europe has “appeared red.” The Department of Defense does not consider this person to be a high threat. A thorough investigation of the individual is ongoing as they remain in the proper custody of U.S. interagency officials with German cooperation.
According to Bob Fenton, the current leader of the resettlement efforts, DHS staff, the Department of Defense, the State Department, the National Counter-Terrorism Center and intelligence partners are examining the evacuees against various watch lists. governmental.
Mayorkas acknowledged that while some Afghans have been singled out on terrorism watch lists in transit countries, they will not be allowed to enter the United States pending further investigation. “Our policy is not to board flights to the United States until they are cleaned up,” Mayorkas said.
He would not say where the people investigated will be detained, but noted that the United States is “working with international allies to address the disposition of these individuals.”
The capacity of the eight U.S.-based facilities that house the evacuees is 36,000 and the U.S. Northern Command is increasing to a capacity of 50,000 by Sept. 15.
There are about 25,600 Afghan evacuees at U.S. military sites as of Friday, about 6,000 more than CBS News reported Wednesday, according to federal data.
Fort McCoy, in western Wisconsin, is the military base that temporarily houses the largest population of Afghan evacuees, about 8,800. Its capacity is 10,000, although in the coming days its capacity will be expanded to 13,000, according to two sources familiar with the operations.
Near El Paso, Texas, in Fort Bliss, there are approximately 6,100 Afghan evacuees. The Mcguire-Dix-Lakehurst Joint Base in New Jersey is home to 3,700. There are 3,650 in Fort Pickett, Virginia, 1,600 in Fort Lee, Virginia, and about 800 in Quantico, Virginia. Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico received its first group of more than 100 evacuees on Tuesday and now has 650 evacuees. The latest housing site announced by the Biden administration is Camp Atterbury, Indiana, which currently houses about 65 evacuees, according to federal data.
Mayorkas confirmed that the United States also admitted a “small number” of unaccompanied Afghan children on Friday. U.S. immigration authorities have designated at least 34 Afghan children as unaccompanied minors, CBS News reported earlier. Some of the children have been sent to HHS-supervised shelters for undocumented young migrants.
While Mayorkas did not provide an updated number of unaccompanied minors, he said, “We expect other people, of course, to be evacuated and admitted to the United States,” Mayorkas said. Asked about the need to accept orphans, Mayorkas said that while he has no specific information on this, “we are committed to providing relief to people who need it.”
President Biden has taken advantage of the former governor of his home state, Jack Markell, to temporarily serve as a one-time White House person in the resettlement of refugees from Afghanistan. Markell, a longtime associate of Biden, was also appointed in late June to be ambassador to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Markell will work throughout the federal government and with the private and nonprofit sector to ensure that Afghans who want to resettle in the United States are thoroughly examined, a White House official confirmed. The Washington Post first reported Markell’s appointment.
Advocates for refugees and immigration have been pressuring the White House to provide mental health counseling and culturally sensitive services to Afghan evacuees. Mayorkas said Friday that it met with dozens of community and nonprofit organizations and vowed to provide “cultural competence, access to counseling, trauma counseling and pastoral care” to Afghans at risk of arriving in the United States.
One of the ways the U.S. military is handling cultural differences is by setting up “mayor cells” at the bases that house Afghans. The cell allows Afghan military officers and partners to discuss issues “in the village,” as VanHerck said. These facilities, he noted, are effectively small towns, so this approach is tailored to solving any problems that arise in a culturally familiar and sensitive way.
Kathryn Watson contributed to this story.