The Trump administration imposed harsher restrictions for Afghans after the attack, halting asylum decisions, suspending visa issuance for all Afghan nationals, and moving to detain refugees already in the country<\/a>.<\/p>\n Afghans at Camp As Sayliyah condemned the attack, but say it was the act of one individual.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to ask the American government not to link the crime of a single Afghan to all Afghans,\u201d said a woman surnamed Salimi, a lawyer who has been at the camp with her husband and two sons, ages 2 and 4, for more than a year.<\/p>\n Salimi, who asked to be identified only by her last name because of security concerns, was approved for U.S. resettlement because her legal work put her at risk of persecution by the Taliban. <\/p>\n She had her own legal office, mostly representing women \u201cwho were poor, who were physically abused, who were pursuing divorce.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of her clients\u2019 husbands were members of the Taliban, some of whom were imprisoned for physical abuse or other crimes, she said.<\/p>\n The night the Taliban returned to power, Salimi said, she got a call from an unknown number.<\/p>\n \u201cYou separated my wife from me and now she\u2019s married to another man and has another life,\u201d said the man on the other end of the line. \u201cYou have to pay the price.\u201d <\/p>\n Soon, Salimi heard the Taliban was looking for her. Her office was closed, as she focused on keeping a low profile and finding a way out.<\/p>\n Salimi was eventually able to apply for a U.S. visa, a process she said took seven or eight months, including security checks. <\/p>\n As she flew to Qatar in January 2025, Salimi believed her family\u2019s future in the U.S. was finally secure, but Trump’s return to the White House just two weeks later upended their plans, with refugee resettlement halted and Afghan nationals later barred from entering the U.S.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cFacing an uncertain future makes our mind and spirit get worse day by day,\u201d Salimi said. \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen to our future? What are they going to do with us?\u201d<\/p>\n Women in particular have suffered under the Taliban, who have barred them from school beyond the sixth grade<\/a>, banned their voices and bare faces in public<\/a> and suspended laws against rape and child and forced marriage<\/a>.<\/p>\n Breaking a promise<\/p>\n The U.S. government\u2019s about-face on Afghan allies and their families has pained veterans such as Retired Army Lt. Col. Mariah Smith, who served three tours in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Translators such as Mohammad \u201cwere absolutely vital to success,\u201d Smith said, making them \u201ca primary target\u201d of the Taliban and other terrorist groups.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was this expectation and promise, like, if you help us, this is a way for you to be able to come to America,\u201d said Smith, who is vice chair of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit based in Arlington, Virginia, that advocates for Afghan and Iraqi allies. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why I think it was so heartbreaking for so many veterans when we pulled out of Afghanistan,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause so many of us felt like we were complicit in breaking that promise.\u201d<\/p>\n The treatment of Afghan allies could make people in other conflict zones \u201cless willing to work with us,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Mohammad, who grew up in Kabul, signed up as a combat interpreter for the U.S. military in 2009. That year, he was seriously wounded in Helmand province when an improvised explosive device detonated, killing the U.S. Marine right in front of him.<\/p>\n After recovering, he was sent to Kabul to do non-combat translation work. But every day, he said, \u201cthe task of just going from your home to the office was just, you know, life and death.\u201d<\/p>\n The risk was worth it, he said, \u201cbecause of the value that we saw in the international community being in Afghanistan,\u201d such as his sisters being able to go to school. <\/p>\n In 2014, he received a Special Immigrant Visa and moved to Texas. He enlisted in the U.S. Army almost immediately as a way to give back to the country that had changed his life. <\/p>\n After finishing his service in 2016, Mohammad \u2014 now a U.S. citizen \u2014 worked as a Defense Department contractor in Afghanistan, right up until the withdrawal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just happened out of the blue, and it was super chaotic,\u201d said Mohammad, who was in Kabul at the time. \u201cI barely managed to get to the airport, get on the plane, and get out.\u201d<\/p>\n With the Taliban now back in power, those with ties to the U.S. military and their relatives were targets. Mohammad\u2019s family spent the next three years in hiding, his parents moving from place to place with four daughters and two sons. <\/p>\n \u201cWe couldn\u2019t all be together in one place,\u201d said his father, a history teacher also named Mohammad who also declined to be fully identified for safety reasons. \u201cThe Taliban intelligence services were constantly after us.\u201d<\/p>\n The family was evacuated to Qatar in 2024 after the younger Mohammad learned of a program to help Afghan relatives of U.S. service members. \u201cThat was a big sigh of relief for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When Trump returned to office, the family had been fully processed and was just waiting for their U.S. visas and plane tickets. \u201cNow we don\u2019t know our fate,\u201d the older Mohammad said.<\/p>\n Several months ago, he said, people working at the camp started saying, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go back to Afghanistan? The country is calm and free now.\u201d He said a State Department representative has since offered money for those willing to go back.<\/p>\n Returning would mean certain death, Mohammad and his family say. His sister Faezeh, 29, is trying to stay optimistic, and says she hopes that \u201cin the near future Trump changes his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes we think they\u2019re going to send us back by force. It\u2019s a very difficult worry,\u201d she added. \u201cEspecially for those of us that have nothing to go back to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those still at the camp struggle to fill their time, resting in the middle of the day to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-552206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Taliban](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/241126-taliban-mb-1005-5cf476.jpg\")
Taliban fighters in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021.Marcus Yam \/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file<\/p>\n![\"Afghan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/211210-afghan-refugees-ew-1147a-cc4cc0.jpg\")
Afghan refugees arriving at Dulles International Airport in Virginia after being evacuated from Kabul in 2021.Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty Images file<\/p>\n