On March 11, the House Budget Committee dropped language from its bill to fund the federal government that would have added 20,000 Special Immigrant Visas, or SIVs, for the Afghan allies who sacrificed their safety to support our overseas mission.
The SIV program remains the only chance of safety for many of the more than 128,000 Afghan principal applicants still in the processing pipeline, according to the program’s latest quarterly report. For this huge number of applicants, there remain about 13,600 available SIVs.
Failing to sustain the SIV program would deal a critical blow to America’s reputation overseas, imperil those we promised to protect, and cause harm to Afghanistan veterans, advocates, and volunteers who have devoted themselves for the past 3 1/2 years to rectifying the harm caused by our chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
Fixing the problems within the program is imperative, starting with a nuanced shortcoming the Washington Examiner first identified in April 2024 in which large numbers of applicants began experiencing what appeared to be batched revocations or denials of Chief of Mission approval, the first step in the SIV process.
Some additional information has come to light about this phenomenon, which has seen Afghans evicted from State Department-sponsored housing in Pakistan in late 2024 and forced legal permanent residents to face uncertain futures in early 2025.
However, a continued lack of transparency about these complications highlights the importance of efforts underway to force the State Department into compliance with its own mandate to assist the allies who supported our Afghanistan operations.
Batched denials issued in silence
In 2023, Afghan SIV applicants began to see their COM applications denied or their former COM approvals revoked in swathes. Boilerplate notices from the State Department informed applicants that appealing the decisions on their cases would require a new letter of recommendation from their former supervisor.
By early 2024, advocates began to make sense of the State Department’s actions, recognizing that rejected applicants were often employed by one of a handful of specific companies or had received a letter of recommendation from a common person.
In August 2024, the State Department spoke candidly about the rationale for the denials, telling the Washington Examiner that anyone who “author[s] even one employment letter for an Afghan who did not work for their company, and supervisors who author even one letter of recommendation for an Afghan not in their chain of command, risk causing withdrawal of COM approval for Afghans for whom they previously wrote letters and denial of COM approval for Afghans for whom they subsequently wrote letters.”
The possibility for fraud hinted at in the State Department’s response has indeed been found in some SIV cases. On Oct. 28, Navy Reserve Cmdr. Jeromy Pittmann was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his role in a pay-to-play scheme involving the SIV program. Pittmann was found to have signed over 20 letters of recommendation for Afghans whom he did not personally know or supervise in exchange for $500 per letter, netting a total of several thousand dollars.
Marty Anthony Muller, a former contractor in Afghanistan, was arrested on Oct. 21 for his role in a three-man scheme involving allegations of wire fraud, visa fraud, and document forgery. Alongside two U.S.-based Afghan colleagues, Muller is accused of having written over 300 letters of recommendation. The government alleges that Muller lied “on at least 208” letters, for which he received $500 each.
The SIV applicants experiencing difficulty with COM approval who spoke with the Washington Examiner were not affiliated with Muller or Pittmann. Instead, they either shared a common recommender or worked for contracting or subcontracting companies whose supervisors issued a large number of letters of recommendation that may have raised alarms within the State Department.
Losing access
Ahmad, who spoke to the Washington Examiner on condition of anonymity, said he worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers through a large subcontracting company for more than two years. He explained that his service ended abruptly on Aug. 28, 2021, simply because “Afghanistan collapsed.”
As a civil engineer in the Train Advise Assist Command, Ahmad worked on Afghan military installations where he could not avoid being witnessed by people who might “inform the Taliban and target us.” On some of his 70 missions, Ahmad said he “didn’t have any hope to return back alive.”
Ahmad reported that the Taliban shot at engineers in some provinces. On one horrifying occasion, he said he witnessed a Taliban bomb explode near the headquarters where his team had stayed the prior evening.
With the Taliban’s reprisal campaign in full swing after the United States departed the country, Ahmad reported that he went into hiding. The first time his hiding place was discovered by the Taliban, Ahmad managed to escape. The second time, a Taliban member “suddenly opened my room door and attacked and hit me with a gun on my head and back.”
Ahmad lived in fear in his homeland as he waited for his SIV application to be processed. He received COM approval in October 2022, but he could not be interviewed inside Afghanistan, where there is no functioning U.S. Embassy.
Ahmad borrowed money for a $1,300 Pakistani visa so the State Department’s Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, or CARE, team could evacuate him to Islamabad in May 2023. He was interviewed in Pakistan the following month.
According to documents provided to the Washington Examiner, shortly after Ahmad’s interview, the U.S. Embassy refused Ahmad’s case and denied his SIV. The refusal letter explained that Ahmad lacked sufficient proof of valuable service and required that he submit a new letter of recommendation. The letter also stated that there was derogatory information associated with Ahmad’s case.
Adam Bates, senior supervisory policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, told the Washington Examiner that the “derogatory information” category is an “umbrella term for basically anything that the vetting authority thinks is even relevant.” Though Bates has not seen Ahmad’s case, he said that it “would not surprise [him] to find that the derogatory information for some of these [contractors’] denials was their affiliation with [their subcontracting company.]”
After appealing his case, Ahmad received a second rejection in February 2024 that cited similarly nebulous concerns.
According to sources familiar with the situation, Ahmad and other employees of his subcontracting company shared a recommender who issued letters for many of the company’s employees. An unknown individual, or individuals, is believed to have copied the recommender’s letter falsely, using it for his or her own application. Upon discovering the fraudulent letter, the State Department appears to have stripped COM approval from every applicant whose SIV relied upon legitimate letters from the supervisor.
Ahmad had been living in CARE housing in Pakistan while attempting to find additional letters or human resources verifications to secure his SIV. On Nov. 3, 2024, CARE emailed Ahmad, informing him that it had ceased processing his case and that he must leave his guesthouse within 15 days. Ahmad and about 20 other families were faced with little choice but to cross back into their home country after their eviction on Nov. 18.
“CARE evacuated us from Afghanistan,” Ahmad explained. “Our lives are in danger in Afghanistan. How should we go back?”
Another employee of Ahmad’s subcontractor, Maissam Saee, shares a recommender with Ahmad. Saee has detailed his long journey to receive an SIV to the Washington Examiner, starting with the revocation of his COM approval in August 2023. After receiving the final blow of learning that his work for USACE no longer qualified him for an SIV, Saee remained in Pakistan. He now works in a shop, earning enough to “just about cover” his expenses.
“Life is really tough here, and we have honestly lost hope,” he said.
Ali, another employee of the subcontractor who spoke on condition of anonymity, shares Saee’s and Ahmad’s recommender. After passing his background check and interview, Ali was relocated to the U.S. in late 2023 and received his green card the following year.
Just weeks ago, Ali was surprised to learn that his COM approval had been revoked. He said hundreds of other former employees of his company with legal permanent residence now face the same dilemma.
Ali believes that the leaders of his company must answer for the problems their employees now face.
“I put my life in danger. I traveled in many, many unsecured provinces. I went to many different camps. I provided faithful service,” he lamented. “Why I should be the victim?”
Lack of information
Advocates have put together the unjust rationale behind denials associated with the aforementioned subcontractor, but other denials remain mysterious due to resounding silence from the State Department.
Andrew Sullivan, executive director of the nonprofit group No One Left Behind, told the Washington Examiner that his organization “is deeply concerned” about the State Department’s admission in August “that vulnerable SIV applicants are having their COM denied and revoked through no fault of their own.” Sullivan also said that “denials are seemingly happening through no fault of the supervisors,” explaining that some supervisors report that the State Department refuses to contact them about letters they have authored.
Among the supervisors still waiting to hear from the State Department is retired Green Beret Vince Leyva, who has written about 70 letters of recommendation for the elite National Mine Reduction Group personnel he supervised while contracting in Afghanistan. NMRG units were trained to operate alongside U.S. Army Special Forces personnel and find buried explosives with either their tools or their bodies. Subject to routine polygraphs, they were the only Afghan forces allowed to carry weapons on U.S. bases.
Leyva told the Washington Examiner that the State Department has not spoken with him “for several months” about the status of his NMRG employees’ SIVs. Roughly a third of the people he recommended had their COM approvals revoked at the end of last February.
The power of the lawsuit
Bates has spoken to the Washington Examiner multiple times about various shortcomings with the SIV program, especially concerning the resounding impact of the State Department’s string of COM revocations and denials.
“Congress intended this program to help, to provide a path to safety for Afghans and their families who assisted the U.S. mission,” Bates said. Unfortunately, “the State Department, on its own initiative and its own discretion, is coming up with these technicalities to deny people even when there is absolutely no reason to question whether they did the work.”
“When they’re using this kind of blacklist policy to invalidate everything that a supervisor has done, huge chunks of applications are being invalidated without any suspicion of any wrongdoing on the part of the Afghans themselves,” Bates said.
“I can say with all the confidence I possess that there are perfectly qualified people with documents that are true and correct that are being denied as a result of these policies,” Bates said.
Another problem with the State Department’s latest set of denials is that they do not appear to comply with the law, which requires that applicants are provided with a written explanation to the maximum extent feasible of the reason for their denial.
In the case of “blacklist or batched denials,” Bates said he has never witnessed a denial letter that explains an applicant’s COM approval was denied because his or her recommender’s prior letters had been associated with fraud. On the contrary, Bates said he has “seen the State Department deny that this policy exists over and over again.”
Seeking to bring the State Department into compliance for all applicants, IRAP filed a lawsuit in October that would ensure applicants who are denied COM approval “have all the information they need to challenge their denials” in an appeal.
“The appeal process is not superfluous. The State Department makes a lot of mistakes in their initial assessments of these cases that are eventually overcome,” Bates explained. But without an adequate explanation for a denial, applicants “have no ability to appeal” and are not “able to tell if they were really denied at all, or if it was just a mistake on the part of the government.”
Running around in circles
Problems with denials are just the latest in an endless series of hoops that the SIV program forces Afghan applicants and American supervisors to leap through.
Aqila first spoke to the Washington Examiner in February 2022, on condition of anonymity, about her attempt to apply for the SIV program based on two years of employment as a logistics manager with U.S. contracting agency Olive Group. Thanks to the inimitable square dance of defense contractor mergers, it was Constellis, which had merged with Olive Group, that answered the Washington Examiner’s 2022 request about whether it would provide documentation Aqila required to apply for an SIV. A Constellis representative responded that Aqila was not eligible for an SIV because her contract, though administered by Olive Group, was paid for by the Afghan government. As it happens, about 80% of the former Afghan government’s budget came from U.S. and international funds.
Aqila applied for the program again in August 2022, relying on documentation of service she performed for Blackwater as a translator involved in counternarcotics police training between 2009 and 2010. Aqila received COM approval in January 2023. But just months ago, on Oct. 31, she was notified by the State Department that her approval had been revoked and that she needed a new letter of recommendation.
There appears to be no rationale for her denial, which she struggles to comprehend. “My heart is broken like glass,” Aqila said.
Since September 2021, former ANHAM employee Beau Lendman has undertaken the herculean task of helping about 5,000 former Afghan employees of ANHAM apply for the SIV program. Over the last two years, his work has been uncompensated. Lendman told the Washington Examiner that “being able to help others come to the U.S. like my family did after World War II is a meaningful project for me. I appreciate the opportunity to do this work, and that’s the compensation.”
Altruism does not mitigate Lendman’s anger at the run-around that the SIV program has put him through. Lendman told the Washington Examiner in April 2024 that about 200 former ANHAM employees had received sudden denials and revocations of COM approval, with the State Department demanding new letters of recommendation if applicants filed an appeal. With no further information about why their prior recommendations were problematic, Lendman developed “several different strategies to help applicants appeal and reapply as required.”
Lendman said that if IRAP’s lawsuit is successful, it will “absolutely” improve his ability to help applicants appeal their denials.
ANHAM’s problems are almost certainly not tied to suspected fraud. Lendman said that only authorized ANHAM supervisors can confirm verification requests sent by the State Department for employees of over 20 subcontractors ANHAM worked with in Afghanistan. “When we get [an invalid] verification request, we respond with, ‘This is not a valid letter. We cannot verify the information,’” Lendman explained.
Inconsistency among State Department employees has bothered Lendman “from the beginning.” “Certain offices or individuals” appear “quick to deny” an applicant, while other applicants “don’t have any trouble.” In 2024, that capriciousness “got much worse,” Lendman said.
In November, Lendman reported that about 20%-40% of denied ANHAM applicants had been successful with their appeals. But he worried that “the government is going to go around this circle again” of issuing additional denials and revocations.
This was exactly what occurred in December, when the State Department threw another wrench in Lendman’s system by rejecting all ANHAM human resources letters. Now, ANHAM employees must submit letters from the subcontractors who employed them directly. Lendman said that many of those subcontractor direct employers are no longer operating.
“It’s outrageous,” Lendman said of the process. “It’s insulting to the applicants and to the company supporting them. They’re making us run around in circles.”
The State Department did not provide responses to various requests for comment about the issues mentioned throughout this report. This included the number of people affected by COM revocation and denial, the fate and number of Afghans being ejected from CARE housing, and the status of SIV applicants whose recommenders’ letters were replicated without authorization. A State Department spokesperson did explain that the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to determine how an Afghan residing in the U.S. is affected by a COM revocation.
Saving the SIV program
Sentiment toward our allies has perceptibly flagged in passing weeks. The suspension of refugee processing and foreign aid funding cuts issued on Jan. 20 affected tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. and stopped aid that helps SIV recipients transit to and resettle in the U.S. On March 11, a proposed ban blocking all travel to the U.S. from Afghanistan showed no carve-out to protect movement for U.S. allies.
IS BANGLADESH THE NEXT AFGHANISTAN?
Some who have stood beside our Afghan partners are speaking out. On March 4, Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Michael McCaul (R-TX), and Richard Hudson (R-NC) wrote a letter to President Donald Trump in support of Afghan allies, asking that the president help “finish cleaning up the mess of the Afghanistan withdrawal by keeping our promise to those who served alongside our troops.”
Neglecting the programs that bring respite to our endangered partners would be an unconscionable betrayal. The SIV program must be continued and improved to honor our word to those who imperiled themselves in service to our country.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into nearly two decades of war and the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
