Federal plan to send Afghans to Congo sparks outrage from critics

The Trump administration’s purported plan to send 1,100 Afghans who helped the United States fight the Taliban to the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a shameful betrayal that should be reversed, according to critics and aid workers.

Shawn VanDiver, the president of the advocacy group AfghanEvac, told The New York Times on Tuesday he had been briefed by State Department officials on the plan to resettle the Afghan wartime allies in Congo or return the refugees, including U.S. military interpreters and more than 400 children, to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

“This is not a resettlement plan,” VanDiver said in a statement on Tuesday. “It is a refusal plan.”

VanDiver accused the Trump administration of abandoning the Afghans currently housed at Camp As Sayliyah, a former U.S. Army base in Qatar, where they’ve been held since late 2024 after the American government promised a path to settlement in the United States if they passed additional checks, the Times reported.

“It is trying to manufacture a refusal,” VanDiver said of the Trump administration’s reported plan. “Offer these families relocation to an active war zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, knowing they cannot accept. Wait for the predictable no. Then use that no as public justification for sending them back to Afghanistan, where the Taliban has a documented record of killing people with U.S. service ties.”

The White House referred inquiries to the State Department, which confirmed on Wednesday that U.S. officials were working to “identify options for voluntary resettlement” of all Camp As Sayliyah (CAS) residents.

“We remain in regular and direct communication with residents on resettlement efforts,” a State Department spokesperson told Newsweek in a statement. “Due to the sensitivity of those discussions, we will not disclose any details regarding negotiations. Moving the CAS population to a third country is a positive resolution that provides safety for these remaining people to start a new life outside of Afghanistan while upholding the safety and security of the American people.”

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott accused the Biden administration of moving too quickly to bring the Afghan allies to the United States, the Times reported on Tuesday.

“The American people have had to pay the price for the irresponsible way hundreds of thousands of Afghans were brought into the United States,” Pigott told the newspaper. “Our focus now is on restoring accountability by advancing responsible, voluntary resettlement options.”

Pigott said the Trump administration was working to find options for the remaining Afghans, but VanDiver and other observers forcefully denounced the proposal to send them to a Central African nation with more than 500,000 refugees already mired in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

“Shame on us,” James Stavridis, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral, wrote on X early on Wednesday. “I think of the brave Afghans that stood alongside us against the Taliban, especially those I worked with personally during my four years in command of the NATO mission there. It is incomprehensible to me that we would not bring them here to the United States, fulfilling the most fundamental obligations of trust and honor.”

Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, said the Trump administration had “turned its back” on the Afghan allies who provided critical support to U.S. forces for more than 20 years in Afghanistan.

“The idea that we’re now in talks to send as many as 1,100 Afghans, whom we have already evacuated, to the DRC, a country with severe political instability, violence, and a massive refugee and humanitarian crisis, is insane,” Kaine said in a news release.

The senator said the U.S. government had assured the Afghans’ safety in exchange for their assistance.

“We have an obligation to follow through on our promise because it’s the right thing to do, and because going back on our word will only make it harder for us to build the kinds of partnerships we may need to advance our national security in the future,” he continued.

The group of Afghans who were evacuated by the United States to Qatar had cooperated with American forces during the 20-year war against the Taliban. More than 190,000 Afghans who were involved were later resettled in the U.S. between 2021 and mid-2025 after passing background checks, the Times reported.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, characterized the proposal as “unconscionable” on X late on Tuesday.

“Our nation promised we would welcome our Afghan allies who helped American troops during the war, and put their families in danger in the process,” Duckworth wrote. “Trump has been callously breaking that promise for no real reason, but now he’s trying to make them choose between facing certain death from the Taliban or moving into one of the world’s worst refugee crises.”

VanDiver said some of the 1,100 Afghans who could be sent to Congo had already been approved to live in the United States.

“Nothing in U.S. law prevents bringing them home to the country they fought for,” he said. “The only thing standing in the way is a policy decision in Washington, and policy decisions are reversible. We intend to reverse this one. Sunlight is how deals like this die. We intend to provide it.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, meanwhile, praised U.S. humanitarian efforts late on Monday in response to a video of Congolese refugees protesting near the White House while accusing Washington of not doing enough to help the Central African nation.

“Obama and Biden flew around 120,00 refugees by airplane from the Congo and resettled them across the United States as part of the US Refugee Admissions Program created by President Jimmy Carter,” Miller wrote on X. 

Carter signed a law in 1980 to provide refugees an expedited path to U.S. citizenship and several benefits, including voting rights; the ability to serve on juries; access to medical care, housing, food and education; and preferences in hiring and university admissions and chain migration for their extended families, he added.

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