As Biden ends mission in Afghanistan, a refugee backlash looms at home

"We have to make sure that the people who come into our country want to support our country, they don't want to attack our country," Rosendale said in an interview. He said he plans to urge Republican Montana Governor Greg Gianforte to turn away refugees housed in his state without a background check test.

The White House is moving quickly to try to suppress any backlash and avoid the kind of politicization and outrage that plagued efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in 2015 and wreaked havoc on the federal refugee program.

Administration officials say they have been working behind the scenes to inform state and local leaders about the extent of the refugees' screening before they set foot on US soil. Refugee organizations, which are working with the administration, are doing the same in the communities. And both are conducting outreach activities in the media to try to dispel myths about the resettlement process.

Biden had planned to meet virtually Thursday with governors who had offered to temporarily shelter or help resettle Afghans, but scrapped the event after 13 American soldiers died in a terrorist bomb attack in Kabul. The following day, the White House announced that Biden appointed the Department of Homeland Security as the lead agency coordinating the relocation of Afghans evacuated to the US.

A senior administration official said Afghans "undergo robust security" that includes "biometric and biographic security checks performed by our intelligence, law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals who work literally around the clock" to screen Afghans before they are allowed to enter the United States. . In many cases, refugees are taken to a third country, such as Qatar or Kuwait, where they undergo additional examinations.

There are little evidence that refugees, in general, they lead to an increase in crime or security threats. Research shows that refugees who came to the United States in recent decades committed crimes at a slower rate than the general population and were not responsible for any credible threat to the homeland.

Officials from organizations working with Afghans say some of the refugees had already started the visa process and were close to being examined. The background check generally takes 12 to 24 months.

Already, thousands of Afghan refugees have made their way to the United States, settling across the country in large numbers in California, Texas and Virginia, areas that already had Afghan populations.

The State Department had previously identified 19 “welcoming” communities where Afghans could settle based on local support, resources, including housing, and cost of living. Only one of those communities has a Republican leader.

Organizations helping refugees and members of Congress say the list has expanded in the days since the The Taliban seized control of the capital of Afghanistan and Afghans rushed to the airport to evacuate.

Since Aug. 14, the United States has helped more than 114,400 people evacuate Afghanistan, including about 5,000 Americans, according to the White House.

Administration officials believe that some 80,000 Afghans are eligible to come to the United States. But the prospect of them coming has sparked a wave of pre-emptive criticism from certain sections of conservative circles. Steve Cortes, former Trump adviser, tweeted an image of a plane full of refugees leaving Afghanistan with the words: “Raise your hand if you want this plane to land in your city. The United States paid unimaginable costs in Afghanistan because of the one-party globalists who dominated the Bush and Obama administrations. " And FOX News anchor Tucker Carlson declared that "first we invade and then we are invaded."

“What I find is that a lot of congressmen or people like Trump think that it is useful to irritate their base, but it is not really representative of what is really happening in the community,” said Jennifer Sime, senior vice president of resettlement, asylum and integration at the International Rescue Committee, working with Afghans. "The more drops in terms of communities, the more support you start to see. Once you get to the mayor level, you start to see a lot more support."

The White House has recognized that the policy of bringing refugees to the United States will be complicated. “We also know that there are some people in this country, even some in Congress, who may not want people from another country to come to the United States as refugees. That's a reality, ”said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who faced a similar backlash while serving in the State Department during the Obama administration. "We cannot stop or prevent that on our own ... And we will continue to clearly convey that this is ... part of the fabric of the United States and not back down from it."

A similar controversy took place six years ago when Republicans fought President Barack Obama's plan to resettle 10,000 refugees from Syria during that country's civil war.

Thirty governors, all Republicans except one, tried to ban the entry of refugees from that country to their states. After the federal government said the state could not stop the resettlement of refugees, lawmakers introduced a bill in Congress that would restrict Syrians across the country.