FREMONT, Calif. (KGO) -- Parts of Fremont are often to referred to as Little Kabul for a reason. It's home to one the largest Afghan communities in the United States -- a large number of whom are currently in the U.S. as "humanitarian parolees."
"I have family members among the humanitarian parolees, and I will say that they are terrified right now. Again, they were promised that they could seek freedom and that they could come to the United States," said Harris Mojadedi, Afghan community advocate. He was born in the U.S. to refugee parents. He also served as a California delegate to the DNC.
Mojadedi said that lost in the discussion of DACA, Dreamers and the US-Mexico border, are the millions of Afghans who risked their lives to help the U.S. military for more than 20 years following its 2001 invasion.
The U.S. relied on Afghans to help the U.S. government and military missions. For example, Afghans, often women working in remote areas, were the backbone of aid programs, providing everything from food to tutoring, as reported by the Associated Press.
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Because of America's hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the U.S. resettled more than 100,000 Afghans as humanitarian paroles. It was the main mechanism to grant them temporary legal status with the promise of citizenship.
"We (have) thousands of folks in the Bay Area who have arrived here under humanitarian parole," Mojadedi said.
The United States has a special immigrant visa program to help Afghans who worked directly with the U.S. military and government, such as interpreters.
The Biden administration created two new visa programs for refugees, expanding the number of Afghans who could apply to resettle in the U.S. Known as P-1 and P-2, these visas are for people such as aid workers, journalists or others who didn't work directly for the U.S. government, but who helped promote goals like democracy.
Mojadedi said Congress failed to pass meaningful legislation to create a legal pathway to citizenship. The concern now is that under the second Trump administration, there will be even less political will to do so. That may force many back to Afghanistan.
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"These are folks that supported our U.S. mission. They supported our armed service members throughout the 20 years that the U.S. was in Afghanistan," Mojadedi said. "Again, we made a commitment, and we made a promise to send these people back to Afghanistan isn't just cruel. It is a death sentence."
According to Mojadedi, many Afghans end up in the East Bay because Afghan Americans have built up institutions and support services to help new arrivals. But, he adds, in addition to the anti-immigrant rhetoric across the United States, Afghans are also targets because many are Muslim.
"For these parolees, there is an inherent bias, whether it be of their faith or their culture," Mojadedi said. "I would say that makes them especially vulnerable--the sort of fear that there is, sort of inherently, whether it is Islamophobia, whether it is anti-immigrant rhetoric."
Mojajdedi ends by saying even if Congress doesn't act, Afghan Americans will continue to do the work of resettlement.