State says it has relocated 900 Americans from Afghanistan in US

The Biden administration has helped relocate about 900 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents from Afghanistan to the United States since the Aug. 31 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the State Department said Monday.

The department said officials are in contact with “fewer than a dozen U.S. citizens” in Afghanistan who want to leave and who have the necessary documents to do so, without providing a timeline on when those individuals would leave.

The information came in the form of an update from the State Department on efforts to relocate and resettle Americans and Afghans who were evacuated following the chaotic drawdown over the summer. Before the withdrawal date, the Biden administration said roughly 6,000 Americans had been evacuated from Afghanistan. 

The State Department said that it has issued over 8,200 special immigrant visa applications since January, and that those individuals have been or are being relocated in the U.S.

In total, the department said 74,000 Afghans have been welcomed into the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome, the official name for the evacuation and relocation effort for at-risk Afghans.

Elizabeth Jones, a veteran diplomat, was tapped to oversee the efforts back in October.

President Biden and his administration endured a torrent of criticism in August amid the Afghanistan withdrawal. While Biden initially said U.S. forces would not leave Afghanistan until all Americans who wanted to leave were evacuated, all U.S. forces left by the Aug. 31 deadline.

The State Department said at the end of September that roughly 100 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents were prepared to leave Kabul but hadn’t yet been evacuated.