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

On November 29, 2025, the State Department sent a cable to every U.S. diplomatic post ordering consular officers to stop processing and refuse all visa applications from Afghan nationals — immigrant, non-immigrant, and Special Immigrant Visas — effective immediately. The cable also instructed officers to cancel any authorized-but-unprinted visas and to destroy already-printed ones, while Secretary of State Rubio publicly confirmed the halt. The directive was triggered by the November 26 shooting of two National Guard members near the White House by an Afghan national, and applied collectively to all Afghans regardless of individual circumstances or prior approval status.

Part of: Trump Administration Asylum and Immigration Benefit Restrictions

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Washington, D.C.

Abuses documented

Actors

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.

Updates

2026-08-19 — Over 1,000 Afghan evacuees remained stranded in Qatar past relocation deadline [4, 5]

NPR reported that more than 1,000 Afghans evacuated to the State Department-run Camp As-Sayliyah in Qatar since 2021 remained confined there with no resettlement path, tying their continued confinement directly to the November 2025 visa freeze. A March 31, 2026 camp-closure and relocation deadline passed without transfers occurring, according to RFE/RL's Radio Azadi, leaving evacuees — including family members of active-duty U.S. troops — in indefinite limbo.

Why we recorded this

Congress created the Special Immigrant Visa program specifically to honor the legal commitment the United States made to Afghans who risked their lives working alongside U.S. forces during the 20-year war. A blanket cable ordering consulates worldwide to refuse all Afghan visas — including SIVs — without notice, rulemaking, or individualized review bypasses the statutory process Congress established and treats an entire nationality as inadmissible on the basis of one incident. Destroying already-printed visas and canceling authorized cases compounds the harm: people who had already cleared every legal hurdle lost their approval with no recourse. We record this consular directive as a distinct act from the concurrent USCIS freezes because it runs through a different agency, a different legal mechanism, and affects a different stage of the immigration process.

Sources

  1. US State Department stops processing visas for Afghan allies — Reuters primary accessed June 17, 2026
  2. US State Department stops processing visas for Afghan allies — Al-Monitor (Reuters wire) secondary accessed June 17, 2026
  3. Reported: Department of State orders a halt to visas for Afghans (ID #2100) — Immigration Policy Tracking Project secondary accessed June 17, 2026
  4. More than 1,000 Afghan refugees have been stuck at a camp in Qatar since 2021 — NPR primary accessed August 20, 2026
  5. Afghan refugees' Qatar relocation deadline passes — RFE/RL (Radio Azadi) secondary accessed August 20, 2026

See also