Hashmat, a vehicle contractor in Afghanistan, spent 10 years providing assistance to the U.S. military. His work made him a target for the Taliban; when Kabul collapsed in 2021, he and his family fled to Pakistan.
He was repeatedly assured his allegiance to the Americans would be repaid with a visa to live in the U.S. He underwent security clearances and a medical exam. Finally, in late 2024, his visa application was awaiting final approval.
Last week, his status was instantly put back in limbo.
Hashmat is among the thousands of Afghan allies who were affected by President Donald Trump’s pause on refugee resettlement. Nearly 1,660 Afghans were scheduled to travel to the U.S. and their flights were canceled due to Trump’s order. Others, like Hashmat, were anxiously awaiting the final green light but now have no reasonable expectation of a path forward.
“I really feel disappointed and betrayed,” Hashmat, who requested that his last name not be used for safety reasons, told the Deseret News.
Trump promised to halt all refugee admissions into the U.S. on the campaign trail, and he did so within hours of assuming the presidency last week. His executive order, titled “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program,” suggested that pausing refugee admissions was a matter of national security, and there is no end date for the pause — only when the president decides resuming resettlement “would be in the interest” of the country.
“I know the veterans and the U.S. military who bled in Afghanistan. They sacrificed a lot as well. ... But they returned safe to their families. We remain stranded.”
— Hashmat, an Afghan ally who is currently stranded in Afghanistan awaiting the completion of his visa request
The pause angered immigrant advocates, faith groups and veterans alike. “Our allies that we put into harm’s way — (Trump) shut them down,“ said Charles Kuck, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. ”This is literally going against the very idea of what America is."
As a whole, refugees are the most thoroughly vetted legal immigrants that enter the U.S., and the visa category for Afghan allies — Special Immigrant Visa — involve the “the most arduous background check in U.S. immigration law,” Time reports. Created by Congress in 2009, the Special Immigrant Visa pathway is for Afghan nationals who provided valuable service to the U.S., like interpreters or translators, and were put in danger by doing so. The 14-step process for applicants includes multiple background screenings, a health examination, and a letter of commendation by their U.S. military supervisor.
Hashmat completed these steps years ago. Bureaucratic backlogs — and now this refugee pause — have been his largest hurdles. He began providing ATVs and other non-tactical vehicles to the U.S. military in 2009. A decade later, his first SIV application was rejected over a technical error; in a letter of commendation, the U.S. supervisor did not identify himself specifically as Hashmat’s “direct supervisor.” Others tell similar stories: One interpreter told The New York Times he was rejected for “unprofessional conduct” after using profanity in 2013; another was denied because, as a 9-year-old, he gave bread to quell the demands of an angry Taliban member who threatened to burn his house down.
As the U.S. began its withdrawal in 2021, Hashmat went into hiding. He told me in June of that year that he received threats daily on WhatsApp from Taliban members; he didn’t leave his home. Come August, as the Taliban took control of Kabul, Hashmat expected to die. “We are betrayed,” he told me. “We are trapped. We are waiting behind a closed door for someone to come and haul us outside and execute us in front of our family.” He didn’t know what would happen next, he said. “But the only thing we know is that we will not survive.”
Hashmat eventually escaped. His wife and youngest son, less than one year old, secured visas to travel to India; Hashmat and his two older sons, ages 10 and 8, fled to Pakistan.
They expected it to be a temporary move. “At the beginning, we were thinking that the resettlement process would not take that long,” Hashmat told me Monday. It’s been nearly four years now. They don’t have legal status in Pakistan, so Hashmat doesn’t have work authorization and his oldest sons, now 13 and 11, are unable to attend school. Hashmat does his best as their tutor, relying on YouTube educational videos. Their youngest son, now four years old, has no memory of life outside of Pakistan.
The older sons remember, however. They want to get to the U.S., to safety. Every day, Hashmat says, they ask for an update on his visa. “Most of the time, I have to lie,” Hashmat said, instilling a fabricated sense of hope in them. But the boys, from social media or friends, hear about what’s going on in the U.S. — the visa backlogs, the refugee pause. “I try to keep them away from these things, but they’re aware of everything that’s going on,” Hashmat said.
In the U.S., a makeshift team of volunteers has done all it can to welcome Hashmat. Christy Staats, an associate vice president of field and constituencies at the National Immigration Forum, assembled a group to sponsor Hashmat and his family through the Welcome Corps program. They pulled together donations and helped Hashmat with the application process. When Hashmat’s first application was rejected, the group tracked down his direct supervisor.
“They had their security checks, their health checks, passed them all, and we’ve just been waiting on the final decision,” Staats said. “And then Trump took over.”
Hashmat said he does not have “a good feeling” about his future under the Trump administration. But his frustration predated the refugee executive order. “I mean, the Biden administration — the first failure was because of them,” he said. He called the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan a “failure.”
“If you come to go to war and make allies, and get support from the local people, and then they left them without said support — it’s quite disappointing," Hashmat said. “These things will be written in the history.”
For now, Hashmat waits, hoping that the refugee pause will be lifted and his application approved. In Pakistan, the government has conducted raids and deportations of Afghans; Hashmat hopes he will be taken to the U.S. before his family is sent back to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
“I know the veterans and the U.S. military who bled in Afghanistan,” Hashmat said. “They sacrificed a lot as well. ... But they returned safe to their families. We remain stranded.”