Barriers to relocation
Everything standing between our allies and safety
The United States recruited, vetted, and promised safety to hundreds of thousands of Afghans. This page tracks what now stands in their way, the suspended pathways, the revoked protections, the detentions and deportations, and the collapse of the system built to bring them home.
Last updated July 31, 2026
Bottom line up front
The United States made a promise. This is what replaced it.
The barriers below are not the product of a single decision. They are the combined effect of suspended programs, terminated protections, aggressive enforcement, and a relocation system taken apart faster than anyone can rebuild it. Taken together, they have stopped the movement of Afghan allies almost entirely.
None of it is permanent. Every barrier here is a choice, and choices can be reversed. This page is the running record of what is in the way, so that the people with the power to remove these obstacles cannot say they did not know.
These barriers trace back to specific actions. Almost every obstacle on this page begins with an executive order, a travel proclamation, or a rule change. This page tracks the effects on the ground. For the legal instruments driving them, and where each one stands, see our companion tracker.
How it was built to work
The pipeline, and where it broke
These diagrams show how relocation and SIV processing were designed to run under Enduring Welcome and the CARE office. Nearly every step shown here has since been slowed, defunded, or halted. They reflect the program as it stood in early 2025, before the dismantling described below.
01 · Refugee and visa pathways
The front door is closed
The pathways built to bring Afghan allies to safety have been suspended, defunded, or barred outright.
Suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, halting Afghan P1, P2, P3, and P4 cases. Thousands of Afghans already vetted and staged abroad remain stranded.
The 90-day foreign-aid freeze and its stop-work orders halted overseas relocation-platform operations and stopped CARE flights.
Suspended entry for nationals of Afghanistan and 18 other countries. Some exemptions applied, including SIVs and immediate family of U.S. citizens.
Expanded the ban and removed the Afghan SIV exemption, turning the entry ban on Afghans into a near-total one.
The State Department confirmed that no SIVs were issued to Afghans in 2026, down from 18,319 in 2025, even though roughly 5,970 visa numbers remain available.
Refugee admissions were capped at 7,500 for FY2026, then raised to 17,500 with the entire increase reserved for Afrikaners from South Africa, leaving Afghans with little to no access.
The program that moved 5,000 Afghans per month safely and legally was dismantled and defunded. No replacement system exists, and the last remaining platform in Doha is now being wound down.
02 · Legal status in the United States
The ground is shifting under those already here
For Afghans who reached the United States, the protections they were granted are being stripped away one at a time.
Afghans paroled in through Operation Allies Welcome or CBP One are seeing protections expire. Re-parole and TPS, the bridges that used to fill the gap, have been curtailed, leaving many with no practical pathway.
DHS did not let TPS lapse. It affirmatively terminated TPS for Afghanistan, effective July 21, 2025 after litigation. It remains terminated, and a June 2026 Supreme Court ruling on other countries' TPS makes reinstatement unlikely. Tens of thousands face deportation risk.
Tens of thousands of Afghan children, spouses, and parents remain separated due to visa bans and consular inaction.
The 2025 reconciliation law imposed first-ever, non-waivable fees on humanitarian applicants, including asylum and annual asylum fees, a parole fee, and an initial work-authorization fee, and barred many Afghans from SNAP, Medicaid, and other supports.
Work authorization for Afghans was cut from two or five years down to 18 months. Refugee resettlement cash assistance was reduced in both amount and duration, down from the nine months of support families used to receive.
Work-authorization processing is stalled or severely backlogged, making it nearly impossible for Afghans to support their families, at the same moment the public benefits that once bridged the gap have been slashed or terminated.
Enforcement is being prioritized over the processing of cases, and USCIS narrowed its adjustment-of-status guidance for Afghan parolees.
03 · Detention and enforcement
Cleared, then targeted
The same government that vetted and welcomed these allies is now detaining and removing them.
Afghan evacuees cleared by the U.S. government are being detained, some with no charges, including former interpreters with pending SIV cases picked up at immigration courthouses.
ICE has focused on Afghans who entered through CBP One and through Operation Allies Welcome, along with evacuees still awaiting status.
The administration reversed longstanding TRIG exemptions, the discretionary exceptions to the terrorism-related inadmissibility grounds. The reversal has pulled many Afghans out of affirmative asylum and into removal proceedings in immigration court.
ICE is detaining Afghan men as heads of household and placing them in removal proceedings, leaving their wives and children, whose asylum claims were tied to the men, untethered from their case and exposed.
In June 2026, a federal court issued a nationwide injunction against ICE's courthouse-arrest practice, finding it violated due process. Enforcement pressure on Afghans has continued.
04 · Abroad and in limbo
Stranded, with the clock running
Tens of thousands remain outside the United States, in custody or in hiding, as their options narrow.
1,039 Afghans remain in U.S. custody at the Doha camp. 752 of them are women and children, 292 have already been denied, and about 150 are family members of active-duty U.S. servicemembers. The State Department missed its March 31, 2026 deadline to empty the camp, which is now slated to close September 30, 2026. They remain in limbo, sheltering from missile debris in U.S.-managed housing.
Rather than bring the Camp As Sayliyah Afghans to the safety they were promised, the administration spent months exploring third-country transfers, including reported talks to send them, interpreters, former Afghan special forces, and more than 430 children among them, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country in active armed conflict. Those talks have largely stalled, with Kosovo now the lone exception under discussion. The choice on offer has been a third country or a return to Taliban control. That is not a choice.
Despite U.S. assurances, Afghans awaiting resettlement, including those with legal visas, are being deported back to Taliban control.
More than 250,000 Afghans are stuck in 90-plus countries worldwide, waiting for the U.S. to act.
05 · Human infrastructure collapsed
The people and systems that ran this are gone
Even where the law still allows movement, the machinery to carry it out has been taken apart.
The congressionally authorized Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts was dismantled, leaving no leadership and no system.
Refugee reception funding was paused, stranding families and halting self-sufficiency programs for new arrivals.
The bottom line
The United States made a promise to the Afghans who served alongside it, and then took apart the machinery that kept it. Every barrier on this page is reversible. We are calling on the administration to restore the pathways, protections, and processing its own actions suspended, and on Congress to provide the visas, the funding, and the oversight to see the job finished. Our allies kept their word. America can still keep its own.
A living record, updated as things change. This tracker reflects the barriers facing Afghan allies as of July 31, 2026. Program operations, court orders, and agency decisions can change status quickly. The process diagrams above show the pipeline as of early 2025 and are included for reference. For the underlying documents and the live litigation tracker, see The Ledger. This page is informational and is not legal advice; for an active case, consult a qualified immigration attorney or contact AfghanEvac.