State Department cable halted all Afghan visa processing worldwide, including SIVs for wartime allies

On November 29, 2025, the U.S. State Department sent a cable to all diplomatic posts worldwide directing consular officers to immediately stop processing and refuse all visa applications from Afghan nationals — including immigrant visas, non-immigrant visas, and Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans who aided U.S. forces during the 20-year Afghanistan war. The cable specified that already-scheduled appointments should not be canceled, but that officers should refuse visas during them. It further ordered that any authorized-but-unprinted visas be canceled and any already-printed visas be physically destroyed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly confirmed the halt on social media, stating that "the State Department has paused visa issuance for ALL individuals traveling on Afghan passports."

The directive followed the November 26, 2025 shooting of two D.C. National Guard members near the White House, allegedly by an Afghan national. The cable offered no individualized adjudication process and applied collectively to all Afghan nationals, regardless of their prior approval status, their role as wartime allies, or the stage of their application. The SIV program — created by Congress to fulfill the U.S. commitment to interpreters, contractors, and other Afghans who served alongside American forces — was effectively suspended without rulemaking. The State Department cable is a distinct action from the concurrent USCIS freezes of the same week (the November 26 pause on Afghan benefit requests and the November 28 nationwide asylum-decisions halt), which ran through a separate agency and legal mechanism.