The country-conditions and program-context report on what the United States promised its Afghan wartime allies, what it built to keep that promise, and what has been dismantled since January 2025. Written for use across U.S. immigration and asylum adjudications.
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The Practitioner's Companion
This report documents the facts. The Companion turns them into legal argument, mapping this record onto the standards for asylum, withholding, and CAT.
Written by Jeremiah Johnson, an immigration attorney with 23 years of experience in immigration law. He served as a DHS asylum officer under both the Obama and first Trump administrations, was appointed to the immigration bench by the first Trump administration, and sat as an immigration judge for eight years, until he was fired by the second Trump administration in November 2025. He is Executive Vice President of the National Association of Immigration Judges and a Senior Advisor to AfghanEvac.
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Protection Promised traces the statutory commitment Congress made to Afghans who served alongside U.S. forces, the vetting and durable-status architecture built to honor it, and how thoroughly applicants are screened before they ever arrive. It then documents the harm caused by the dismantling of those protections, inside the United States and abroad.
It is offered as evidence. Practitioners citing it in immigration court should read it alongside the Practitioner's Companion, which connects these findings to the governing legal standards.
What's inside
- Scope, audience, and methodology
- Background: twenty years of U.S. reliance on Afghan partners
- The promise: what the United States told its Afghan allies
- What the United States built: the relocation and resettlement architecture, 2021–2025
- Harm to Afghans inside the United States: the dismantling of protections, 2025–2026
- Harm to Afghans abroad caused by U.S. policy choices
- Conditions in Afghanistan, mass coerced returns, and a deepening humanitarian emergency
- Returns are not evidence of safety, and conditions have not improved
- Considerations relevant to the exercise of discretion
Who wrote this
A U.S. Navy veteran who founded and leads the #AfghanEvac coalition, the primary civilian body coordinating with the U.S. government on the relocation and resettlement of Afghan wartime allies.