It’s been months since the Biden administration pulled the plug on America’s efforts in Afghanistan and there are still thousands of U.S. residents trapped in the wartorn country according to reports. The administration has been exceptionally quiet on the matter, trying to continually hide the fact that the State Department knows of many thousands of U.S. legal permanent residents that still remain in the country with minimal effort to extract them.
The findings only recently came to light and seemed to be lost in the election news last week. As it stands now, the operating assumption is around 14,000 U.S. residents still stranded in Afghanistan, a truly unconscionable number:
The finding, disclosed by a congressional aide familiar with the matter, has been transmitted by the State Department to aides on Capitol Hill in private, but officials demurred on revealing the figure when questioned by Republican lawmakers on Wednesday, insisting the agency doesn’t track the figure.
“Isn’t the operating assumption about 14,000?” Republican Rep. Chris Smith asked Brian McKeon, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, at a hearing on Wednesday, referring to the figure briefed in private.
“We don’t track [legal permanent residents],” McKeon responded. “It’s a good question why we don’t,” he added, suggesting the lack of clarity might be because the State Department does not require Americans and legal permanent residents traveling abroad to report their whereabouts.
Reports also indicate that the State Department has been moving at a snail’s pace to continue extracting U.S. residents in small batches, moving 100 to 200 at a time. Nowhere near the pace needed to ensure no one would be left behind, as President Biden promised repeatedly.
Aside from permanent legal residents, the State Department also disclosed that there were around 400 U.S. citizens still seeking to leave in addition to the thousands of legal residents:
Lawmakers have criticized the State Department for being too slow to release specific numbers on how many citizens, legal permanent residents, and Afghans who supported the U.S. war effort remain in the country. Administration officials said the numbers are difficult to track and constantly shifting while infuriated U.S. lawmakers charge the administration is failing in its duty to keep track of the statistics or is keeping the full scope of people left behind under wraps. In the month after the U.S. withdrawal, the State Department repeatedly said there were around 100 U.S. citizens still in the country seeking to leave—until it revealed in recent weeks there were around 400 people.
From the onset, it was entirely clear that the Biden administration, with a bungled withdrawal plan, had no workable solution to rescue the thousands of people abandoned and stranded in the country overnight. Even now, the fact that Afghanistan has faded from the headlines is unforgivable considering how many people America abandoned in the process still remain in harm’s way.
The Biden administration’s actions regarding the trapped U.S. residents drew ire from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo:
The Biden Administration should be more concerned with getting the 14,000 legal permanent U.S. residents & green-card holders out of Afghanistan than it is about the $450,000 payments to illegal immigrants.
Their priorities are all wrong.
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) November 5, 2021
The State Department has no way to track the safety of these individuals leaving them exposed to arrest, detainment, or violence at the hands of the Taliban or other terrorist groups:
McKeon, the State Department official, said spotty safety records of charters flying out of Mazar-i-Sharif had prevented some flights. He also said in testimony that one U.S. citizen had recently been arrested in the Taliban-controlled country, and U.S. officials were unsure of that person’s whereabouts.
What the revelation truly demonstrates has been a means for the Biden administration to hide the numbers and emphasize U.S. citizens rather than U.S. legal residents to conceal the true number of people stuck in the country:
Now we see why the Biden administration has relentlessly emphasized the number of U.S. citizens remaining in Afghanistan and simply avoided the topic of how many legal permanent residents, a.k.a. green-card holders, were left in the country. The U.S. citizen number is an embarrassment; the legal permanent resident number is a colossal and unforgivable policy failure.
There is no good way to spin the situation, the withdrawal from Afghanistan remains Biden’s largest and most destructive presidential failure up to this point. There are still U.S. residents trapped in the country, unable to get to safety, and still hundreds of U.S. citizens with them, basically abandoned by the President.
If not for committee meetings like this, the American people would still be completely in the dark as the Biden administration continues to duck responsibility and cover up for the failed Afghanistan withdrawal.
