Advocates who have been appealing to the Biden administration for months now to evacuate Afghan allies quickly and their families to a U.S. territory expressed anger and frustration at U.S. failure to secure their safety before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. Roughly 18,000 Afghans have applied for special visas. That number doesn’t include tens of thousands of family members. But of those total numbers, only about 2,000 have been evacuated to the U.S. 

“We’ve been screaming from the rooftops for months now that we need to get these allies to Guam or another U.S. territory,” Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) president Krish O’Mara Vignarajah told Religion News Service (RNS). The resettlement agency has been among allies’ fiercest advocates as the U.S. military’s withdrawal date has approached. “We feel strongly that these Afghan allies fought side by side with us for 20 years, and surely we can leave side by side.” 

In a May letter to the Biden administration, LIRS had called on the Biden administration to evacuate thousands of Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants and families members to a U.S. territory as soon as possible, writing that “[s]uch an evacuation is well within historical precedent.” Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero told the Biden administration in a letter the next month that the territory was set to welcome Afghan allies and their families, citing Vietnamese and Kurdish allies’ welcoming in 1975 and 1996. Just say the word, the governor essentially stated.

But devastating images from over the weekend showed desperate Afghans attempting to flee the country through Kabul’s airport, some even attempting to cling to the outside of a U.S. aircraft. It’s unclear how many at the airport have been visa applicants, with Vox reporting that some have likely been told to shelter at home for now. That report said some Afghan allies “have also had to grapple with whether they should destroy documents proving that they worked for the US government, which could either be their golden ticket to America or a death sentence if the Taliban finds them.”

During an address to the nation on Monday, President Joe Biden claimed that “[p]art of the answer” as to why evacuations didn’t begin earlier is because “some of the Afghans did not want to leave early, still hopeful for their country.” But that’s a statement advocates like O’Mara Vignarajah profoundly disagree on.

“We have been in touch with countless SIV recipients who have been desperate to leave Afghanistan for months and have not been able to due to insufficient financial resources and inadequate flight accessibility through international organizations,” the LIRS president told RNS. In a statement to the media outlet, HIAS president Mark Hetfield further said that the president was “blaming the victim” during his speech.

“Most SIVs couldn’t get through the 14-step, years-long bureaucratic obstacle course for SIVs,” Hatfield continued. The agency leader also said that an administration policy this month announcing an expansion of refugee access was just too difficult for some allies to access. “The process looks like it was designed to keep people out of the United States, not rescue them. And the (United States government) had lots of time to put systems in place to facilitate refugee resettlement without sparking an exodus. They didn’t make the effort, and that is inexcusable.”

While the Biden administration is apparently still attempting to hammer out deals to evacuate Afghan allies and families to third territories like Qatar, advocates continue to say that the Biden administration has legal authority to evacuate them to the U.S., or a U.S. territory, through humanitarian parole (a process the administration has also recently used to return deported military spouses and separated parents). The first group of Afghan allies and families arrived in Fort Lee in Virginia late last month.

“Ordinary Afghans didn’t have time to settle their affairs or move to safer areas–they are now refugees in their own country,” #WelcomeWithDignity communications coordinator and activist Bilal Askaryar said. “The Taliban are already going door to door, finding journalists, prominent women, and marking the doors of ethnic and religious minorities. In order to prevent inestimable amounts of bloodshed, President Biden must immediately order the US military to secure safe passage out of the country for Afghans who are at risk and provide them humanitarian parole into the United States. The time for politics is over; we need to save lives now.”

Indeed, one Democratic lawmaker from Arizona bluntly said to screw the paperwork and help the folks who helped us. 

“What can we do now? Evacuate every person we can that helped us in Afghanistan. Skip the bureaucratic bullshit, get people on planes,” tweeted Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a U.S. military veteran. “Land them anywhere in the United States. We are a country of 330 million people. We can easily absorb 100,000 people.” Some advocates have suggested using the planes that immigration officials charter to deport people to save people instead. That’s a great idea. “There are tons of cruise ships that are empty,” Gallego continued. “There are bases everywhere around the world, and there is this whole massive country that is used to assimilating immigrants (and Canada). Just put them on fucking planes and get them out of there.”