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A quick ICYMI before we dive in: We hosted a press call yesterday with a national security expert and Afghanistan veteran, refugee resettlement leaders and a policy expert to discuss what the U.S. must do to improve the evacuation of Afghan allies, and underscore the humanitarian and national security imperatives for immediate action. AFGHAN DEADLINE — Despite pressure for an extension from G7 leaders and advocates, President Biden said Tuesday he’d maintain the Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan, a team at CNN reports. While the Pentagon says it plans to evacuate all remaining Americans in the country by next week, the fate of thousands of Afghan allies is less clear. "Damn the deadline," Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) said before Biden announced his decision, per NBC News. "Americans want us to stay until we get our people out, and so do our allies. ... Mr. President, tell the Taliban we're getting our people out however long it takes and that we're perfectly willing to spill Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS blood to do it." Meanwhile, DHS announced Tuesday that it would offer some Afghan evacuees humanitarian parole, following a rigorous security check, to enter the U.S. while they wait for their Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applications to be processed, Morgan Chalfant and Rebecca Beitsch report for The Hill. NONGOVERNMENT NETWORK — Without a clear plan from the administration, a "network of veterans, private sector workers, human rights activists and other volunteers" are working desperately to evacuate friends and family from Afghanistan. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Los Angeles-based community organizer Arash Azizzada details some of these efforts: "We’re figuring out what Taliban checkpoints to avoid and what gate at the airport is the most accessible, if any are. We’re raising money, millions of dollars overnight, to charter planes. We’re endlessly compiling spreadsheets with information about Afghans who are under threat from the Taliban. We’re doing this because the American government isn’t."
DEADLY CROSSING — An increase in migration to the U.S.-Mexico border comes with a grim counterpart: an increase in deaths in the desert. For The New York Times, Simon Romero talks to Sheriff Oscar E. Carrillo in West Texas’ Culberson County, who has found the bodies of 19 migrants this year alone. "I used to request regular stuff like bulletproof vests," said Carillo, whose 10-person department is overwhelmed trying to identify victims and locate their families. "Now I’m asking for more body bags." As of July, Border Patrol officials alone had found 383 migrants dead this fiscal year — the highest number in almost a decade. "‘All these bodies are deserving of an investigation,’ [Carillo] said, calling the dead migrants ‘esta pobre gente inocente’ — poor innocent people." RACIST ORIGINS — In a "momentous judicial acknowledgment of the plainly racist and nativist underpinnings of laws," U.S. District Judge Miranda Du recently ruled that a law criminalizing re-entry to the U.S. after deportation "is unconstitutional because it’s explicitly racist in its origins," Hassan Kanu writes in an opinion column for Reuters. Judge Du’s ruling is "a rare admission by the courts that foundational elements of the federal immigration machinery — enforcement processes we now take for granted — actually clash with constitutional equal protection guarantees," Kanu writes. For NBC News, Char Adams spoke with Black immigrants about how disparities in the immigration system impact their lives: "Black immigrants are constantly profiled," said Yoliswa Cele, UndocuBlack’s national director of narrative and media. "... Black immigrants also have the highest visa denial rates. Black immigrants are more likely, when they are detained, to be put in solitary confinement. We bear the brunt of all the consequences that happen, all the xenophobia in this country." Thanks for
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