In late August, volunteers began telling me about increasing numbers of Afghans seeking humanitarian visas to Brazil and subsequently undertaking dangerous, expensive journeys to the United States through the Mexican border.
I asked the U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the number of Afghans encountered monthly at the southern border since the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. CBP’s figures demonstrated a 1,000% increase in encounters between fiscal year 2021 and the first 10 months of fiscal year 2022. Nearly half of the encounters in 2022 occurred in June and July, the last month for which data were provided. The numbers indicated that volunteers were correct: Afghans were risking their lives to find asylum in the U.S. even as our allies suffered amid interminable visa and refugee processing backlogs.
