Set the record straight from the podium.

Mr. Thomas “Tommy” Pigott
Spokesperson
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

September 8, 2026

RE: Request for correction from the podium regarding Camp As Sayliyah and Afghan wartime allies

Mr. Pigott:

On August 31, ABC News aired your description of the people the United States is holding at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar. You said they are “primarily a group of people that were either unvetted, brought there by other contractors, not based off of promises made from the United States.”

That statement is false, and the Department's own records are what make it false. We are asking you to correct it from the podium at your next on-camera briefing.

This letter is public because the statement was public. A misstatement delivered to a national broadcast audience cannot be repaired in private.

What the record shows

The Department built Camp As Sayliyah. The Defense Department Inspector General, in report DODIG-2025-163 published September 19, 2025, states that “in October 2022, the Department of State (State) established the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE), including CARE Doha at Camp As Sayliyah (CAS), Qatar, to support the Afghan relocation effort known as Enduring Welcome.” The same report finds that “as of October 1, 2023, State was responsible for the operations and logistical support of CARE Doha.” That is the documentary record. It also matches what I saw. I was present when that transition of authority occurred.

The contractors were working for the United States. The camp operates under a U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program V task order, awarded in May 2023 at an initial value of $162.1 million and expanded to approximately $411 million across 35 modifications. The contractors you invoked were performing a United States government contract, written by the United States government, awarded by the United States government, and paid for by the American taxpayer, in support of a State Department office. They did not act on their own initiative. They acted on ours.

The United States moved these people. The Lead Inspector General for Operation Enduring Sentinel reported to Congress that these Afghans were “relocated by the U.S. Government” to “U.S.-managed platforms” in Qatar and Albania. That is the government's own language to the legislative branch, and it is irreconcilable with what you told ABC News.

The people at Camp As Sayliyah were vetted, and the Department's own files prove it. Camp As Sayliyah exists in order to process and vet them. The Lead Inspector General described the facility to Congress as the place “where thousands of Afghans were processed en route to the United States.” Processing is the purpose of the platform, and screening is what processing means. People are not at that camp instead of being vetted. They arrived there after vetting and are at that camp because they are being vetted even more.

One distinction matters more than any other here, and it is the one that keeps getting elided. The vast majority of the people at Camp As Sayliyah did not come out in the August 2021 airlift. They came later, through Enduring Welcome, on scheduled flights out of Kabul, after pre-travel vetting, biometric enrollment, and medical screening were completed in Kabul before they ever boarded an aircraft. Camp As Sayliyah did not exist as a CARE platform until October 2022, more than a year after the withdrawal. When officials invoke the chaos of the airlift to characterize this population, they are describing a different group of people, in a different year, under a different process. The residents of Camp As Sayliyah were screened before they left Afghanistan, and their cases have been in continuous adjudication ever since.

The denials settle the argument. Residents of Camp As Sayliyah have received denials from this Department. A denial is an adjudication. It is the documented output of a completed review, issued by this Department, in a case file this Department opened, after interagency screening this Department requested. The United States cannot deny an application it never examined. Every denial issued to a resident of that camp is affirmative proof that the vetting system ran, and ran to conclusion. If the Department's position is that this population is unvetted, then the Department is asking the American public to believe that it issues formal determinations on people it never screened. It cannot have this both ways. Either the screening happened, in which case your statement was false, or the Department has been issuing denials without review, which is a far more serious admission than the one we are asking you to make.

Others at Camp As Sayliyah hold Chief of Mission approval. That approval is itself a security and eligibility determination, made by this Department, after review by the intelligence and law enforcement communities. State's own Inspector General testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 14, 2026 that “consular officers screen and vet Afghan SIV applicants through an interagency process that includes the State Department, DoD, DHS, and the intelligence and law enforcement communities,” and that “the State Department followed established processes to screen and vet Afghan SIV applicants.”

The claim that these people are unvetted should be withdrawn.

There are 1,039 people inside that camp today. Of them, 752 are women and children, 19 are pregnant, and roughly 150 are the immediate family of American service members and recently separated veterans. It is scheduled to close in 22 days, and the Department has published no destination plan and communicated nothing actionable to the people in their charge.

Further corrections

The obligation question. Asked whether the United States has an obligation to people who were willing to fight and die for it, you answered, “But that is not the question before us currently,” and then, “But it's not the right question.” That is not a factual error, so we are not asking you to correct it. We are asking you to answer it. State the Department's position, on the record, on whether this country owes anything to the Afghans who served alongside American forces. The public is entitled to know, and refusing the question is itself an answer.

The vetting narrative around the November 2025 suspension. The Department and other senior officials have repeatedly attributed the shutdown of Afghan immigration processing to vetting failures under a prior administration. The record does not support that framing. Rahmanullah Lakanwal entered the United States in September 2021 on humanitarian parole under Operation Allies Welcome. His asylum application was granted in April 2025, under this administration. On November 26, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that “processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals is stopped indefinitely.” On November 28, 2025, this Department announced that it “has IMMEDIATELY paused visa issuance for individuals traveling on Afghan passports.” More than 250,000 people are still living with the consequences of decisions made in that week. If the Department maintains that a prior administration's vetting caused the April 2025 approval, say so plainly and explain how. Otherwise, stop asserting it.

The undisclosed narrowing of “family.” We are aware that the Department has moved to narrow who counts as the family of a United States service member, including those at Camp As Sayliyah, and that it has announced no such change. Parents and siblings are not incidental relatives in this context. They were approved through a Department of Defense program precisely because their relationship to an American in uniform placed them in danger, and that danger did not diminish when internal guidance changed. Roughly 150 of the people inside Camp As Sayliyah are the immediate family of American service members and recently separated veterans. If the Department has narrowed the definition, say so publicly, publish the criteria, and state the effective date. If it has not, say that instead. What the Department cannot do is apply a standard that no one outside the building has been permitted to read, to people whose lives depend on it.

Note what these two things have in common. Camp As Sayliyah residents are recast as somebody else's contractors' problem. Family members of American service members are recast as too distant to qualify. In both cases a category shrinks, an obligation shrinks with it, and no policy change is ever announced. A definition changed quietly is still a policy, and the public is entitled to read it.

The record of asking

This is not a first request. AfghanEvac has written to senior Department officials about Camp As Sayliyah since January 2025. 29 senators wrote this spring. 83 House members wrote in June. 35 members of the House and Senate wrote in July. More than a thousand Americans have signed a petition asking this Department to finish what it started. The Department has answered almost none of it.

What we are asking for

1. A correction, delivered from the podium at your next on-camera press briefing, of the statement that the people at Camp As Sayliyah were unvetted, brought by other contractors, and not brought on promises made by the United States.
2. A statement of the Department's position on whether the United States has an obligation to the Afghans who served alongside American forces.
3. Either the factual basis for attributing the November 2025 Afghan processing shutdown to a prior administration's vetting, or an end to that assertion.
4. Public disclosure of any change to the definition of the family of a United States service member for relocation eligibility purposes, including the criteria and the effective date, or confirmation on the record that no such change has been made.

One more thing worth knowing

In July of this year, Lake Research Partners and The Tarrance Group surveyed a national sample of likely 2026 voters on behalf of AfghanEvac and HIAS.

• 84% said the United States should keep its commitments to Afghan allies and their families.
• 73% said Afghan mission partners should be allowed to remain in the United States while their cases are processed.
• 72% supported a permanent wartime allies program rather than improvisation after each conflict.
• 63% opposed deporting them or transferring them to third countries.
• 83% agreed that no American in uniform should have to leave family behind, and among military households, 73% held that view strongly.

You told a national audience that the obligation question is not the right question. The country you speak for has already answered it, in both parties, by margins most legislation never approaches. We intend to keep that answer in front of the American public, and we would much rather do it alongside this Department than in spite of it.