Back in 2021, as Kabul fell to the Taliban following the chaotic U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Republicans in Congress were among the loudest voices in Washington arguing that the United States had to throw open its doors to those Afghans who had assisted Americans during roughly two decades of war.
At the time and in the years since, G.O.P. lawmakers have pressed for the expansion of a special visa program for Afghan allies, insisting in letters to the administration, in hearings and in news conferences staged outside the Capitol, that it be expanded.
Then Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan man who enlisted in a paramilitary force that worked with Americans and who was evacuated by the U.S. military in 2021, was charged with shooting two National Guard members in downtown Washington just before Thanksgiving, killing one and severely wounding the other.
President Trump declared that the United States “must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan” during the Biden administration. And even though Mr. Lakanwal was not admitted under a Special Immigrant Visa, the administration halted that program, closing the last legal pathway for Afghans to enter the country.
Republicans who were some of the leading advocates for the United States to provide refuge for Afghans have now gone quiet, apparently resigned to the demise of the Special Immigrant Visa program.
“Politically, I wouldn’t say it’s dead on arrival, but it’s severely damaged now,” Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said of the push to issue more visas. “It’s just hugely unfortunate, because they fought alongside our military. They are veterans.”
Yet there has been no move by the Republican-led Congress to scrutinize the administration’s decision to suspend the visas, or to attempt to force the administration to resume issuing them.
Since 2021, the United States has allowed more than 190,000 Afghans to settle in the country, some on green cards as Special Immigrant Visa recipients, and others who were permitted to enter the country temporarily while they applied for permanent residency or asylum.
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers had been pressing for an additional 20,000 visas to be issued, writing in a letter to senior appropriators in May that the program included “rigorous vetting” and was critical to providing “a lifesaving path to safety for Afghan nationals who face deadly retribution as a result of their work alongside U.S. troops, diplomats, and contractors.”
But the shooting shattered the bipartisan consensus.
“What happened changed things,” said Representative Lloyd K. Smucker, a Pennsylvania Republican who was among those calling for more visas in the spring. “I’ll defer to the president on what he thinks is the right thing to do.”
“After this,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, referring to the shooting, “we’re going to have to look at everything.”
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said it was “evident” that more vetting was needed, but that “there were an awful lot of Afghans who were invaluable in assisting our troops and helping to keep them safe.”
Some Democrats were far more blunt. Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a Democrat who flew to Kabul in 2021 on an unauthorized trip to witness the evacuation of Americans and Afghans, said his Republican colleagues no longer appeared interested in collaborating on a solution for the visa program.
“They’re pretty much done having conversations,” he said. “They won’t do anything to go against Trump, and they don’t mind if our Afghan allies die in the process.”
Republicans widely condemned the Biden-era parole program that allowed tens of thousands of Afghans to stay in the country for two years while they applied for legal permanent residency. Mr. Lakanwal entered the country under that temporary legal status and was granted asylum in April.
Some immigration hard-liners in Congress have called for beefing up the vetting of such immigrants, including by rescreening and possibly deporting some Afghans.
But Republicans have argued that vetting for the special visa program — which required applicants to undergo background checks, biometric screenings and interviews, and to submit a written recommendation from a top military or diplomatic official — is meticulous.
Mr. McCaul said the shooting of the National Guard members was the latest example of the U.S. government failing to rehabilitate veterans of its wars, calling Mr. Lakanwal, who had shown signs of depression and erratic behavior as early as 2023, someone who “obviously needed some help, and there was no access.”
“We’ve had veterans in the past who have created horrific acts of violence, like Tim McVeigh, Lee Harvey Oswald,” said Mr. McCaul, who was the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee during the Afghanistan withdrawal. “But we don’t condemn the whole community. What it’s doing is it’s basically saying that all Afghans are terrorists. And they’re not.”
Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, who attempted to enter Afghanistan amid the evacuation, said the Biden administration had “dumped” Afghans with Special Immigrant Visas into the country with insufficient federal programs to assist them.
“We need to put a pause on until we get ahold of the people that came here through the S.I.V. program, and we have touched base with them, know where they’re at and make sure they’re all in a good space,” Mr. Mullin said.
Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, who worked closely with Republicans in 2021 to push for a robust resettlement program for Afghan partners, said Republicans were too afraid of political backlash to challenge Mr. Trump’s pause on the visa program.
“There are Americans alive today who would not have come home had it not been for Afghans who stood and protected them,” Mr. Crow said. He said Republicans had lost sight of the role of Congress to “be a check on the presidency, regardless of whether the president in office is your party or not.”
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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