August 19, 2025 • 29 mins
Amy speaks with Shawn VanDiver, the President of Afghan Evac -- an organization dedicated to defending Afghans who were promised safe harbor in America, after bravely assisting our men and women in uniform. Don’t miss this powerful episode of Truth In The Barrel.
*This episode was recorded on August 7th, and aired on August 12th, 2025
About Truth in the Barrel:
Amy and Denver are both military veterans, political junkies, and whiskey lovers who sit on opposite sides of the aisle but have one thing in common: they love the United States of America.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Did you know that thousands of our Afghan partners who fought alongside us during the 20years of war in that country, who came to the United States so that their lives would be
saved, are now at risk of being deported back to Afghanistan?
Yes, the Trump administration has determined that all is well back in Afghanistan andthere's no risk to these people.
(00:26):
But of course, there's a huge risk.
We promised our Afghan partners that they could find a home here in the United States ifwe were to ever pull out of that country.
Well, we did.
Now we are reneging on that promise.
Here to talk about the plight of our Afghan partners and what America's post-9-11 veteransare doing to help them and to help raise awareness about what's happening to our Afghan
(00:54):
friends right now is Sean Van Diver.
president and founder of Afghan evac.
Sean is also a retired U.S.
Navy veteran.
Welcome to Truth in the Barrel, oh
Thanks so much for having me today, Amy.
We're really excited to be here.
Well, this is an important issue and I couldn't think of anyone better to talk about itbecause you are sort of the leader of fighting for m our Afghan partners right now around
(01:20):
the nation.
I want to start with the big picture here.
Can you tell our listeners who are these people and what's happening to them right nowhere in the United States?
Sure.
So again, thank you for having me on today.
The folks that we stand up to help are people who enabled the United States mission over20 years of war in Afghanistan.
(01:44):
We're very narrowly focused on Afghanistan, but these same principles apply to the folkswho helped us in Iraq, in Vietnam, so on and so forth.
Any time American troops, American servicemen and women go down range to fight in the nameof our freedom, fight for US interests, we can't do it alone.
We have to have help from local nationals because they know the landscape.
(02:07):
They know what to look out for.
They hear things that maybe we wouldn't hear.
They speak the language.
They understand the culture.
And these are folks who were interpreters, drivers, cultural advisors.
mean, trash truck drivers, but also drivers of our American troops.
They were people who served alongside our diplomats.
And it's even bigger than that.
So you have sort of two tracks.
(02:27):
You have the consular pathway, which is special visa holders.
People who worked directly for the United States government were paid by United Statesgovernment.
But a second track, which is smaller, uh they're in the refugee track, right?
And these are all people who worked uh in our interests.
Journalists who published stories about the Taliban, uh lawyers and prosecutors who putthem away.
(02:51):
These are Afghan partner forces who trained in the United States and fought and bledalongside our service members.
People who are service members of our Green Berets and Navy SEALs consider
brothers and sisters.
These are female helicopter pilots and female tactical platoon leaders andparliamentarians and NGO workers and anybody who stood up for the idea of democracy and is
(03:12):
now and now their lives are at risk because of their relationship with us.
Yeah, so they're over here.
uh We brought them over here or tried to bring as many as we could during the lastadministration under what's called temporary protective status.
And I'll ask you about that uh shortly here, but I want to get to what is happening tothem right now.
(03:36):
What is different now than a year ago or two years?
So it's important to think about this in two buckets, right?
One, you've got people who've already made it here, and then the other you've got peoplewho are still waiting.
There's about 195,000 people who made it here, and about 260,000 people who are stillwaiting to come.
uh The folks who made it here who are under temporary protected status, that's about10,000, but there's a bigger number of folks who are here under humanitarian parole.
(04:04):
When we flew them over here during the NEO, the Non-Combat and Evacuation Operation, manyof them
only had temporary status.
So uh we were moving Afghans here at a clip into durable status at a clip of about 5,000per month until January 20th.
At 12.01 PM, President Trump took over and around 8 PM that night on January 20th, heimplemented some executive orders.
(04:29):
One executive order stopped all refugee processing, which includes a ton of family.
There's about 15,000 family members, including 3000 individual
family members of active duty U.S.
military and about 2800 unaccompanied children who are here in the United States withfamily waiting to come over.
(04:49):
And look, we were moving it 5,000 a month under enduring welcome, which brought them hereunder a durable status.
Now, the folks who are already here from August of 2021, August to like September, Octoberof 2021, they came under a different program and many were still waiting because of our
bureaucracy to process.
(05:09):
President Trump took away their temporary protected status, they're ending humanitarianparole, and they're targeting these folks at green card interviews.
People who are special marine visa holders are just going to get their biometrics or aregoing for a check-in, they're getting snatched up.
People who are going to court because they came over through the southern border legally,they went through CBP-1, an app that Homeland Security designed to...
(05:37):
to lower the number of illegal crossings.
And it's just heartbreaking to so many veterans like me and like you and like so manyothers to watch our friends or people like our friends who stood up for the idea of
democracy.
And now this administration is snatching them off the streets from their families andthey're doing nothing wrong.
Why do you think this is happening?
(05:59):
Why is happening?
Stephen Miller is the reason why this is happening, right?
You've got Stephen Miller at the White House, a guy named Robert Law, who's about to beconfirmed, unless we do something about it, as the Undersecretary for Policy, Plans and
Strategy at the Department of Homeland Security.
And then until last week, there was a woman named Mary Bishoping at the State Department,who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Afghanistan.
(06:22):
She lost that job.
She's been reassigned and it hasn't been announced where yet.
uh
sort of started talking about her because she is Afghan herself and worked on thewithdrawal investigation and then started lobbying for repatriation of people that are
stuck at the various sites around the world.
Then there's one more person at State Department who's like a big problem.
His name's Spencer Cretion.
(06:44):
He's the senior bureau official for population refugees and migration.
And PRM is the bureau.
where refugees used to come through.
These people were responsible for getting us to 100,000, 125,000 refugees every year.
Incredible work, hard work.
Their job is to protect people, but now they're being repurposed to repatriate, deportpeople around the world.
(07:09):
So those three people and then the minions among them, but Stephen Miller is the realreason.
Yeah.
And I'm guessing these folks who the Trump administration has put in charge, probablynever served in Afghanistan.
know?
And it's just, to me, it's an absolute tragedy.
How many total are we talking?
(07:30):
I mean, I've read reports that there are 200,000 Afghan allies resettled here in theUnited States.
that it?
And there's more still, as you said, to come.
m But when you think back to Vietnam, millions of people had to come.
For this, it's like a total of less than 500,000.
We can take that.
(07:50):
We have a strong jobs market.
Still, we think, we don't know what's going to happen now.
And we don't know if we're to be able to trust the numbers.
uh we have a strong jobs market, jobs that need to be filled.
And they're taking a bunch of people out of the country.
These are folks who can come and help us.
And we made them a promise.
We made a commitment.
(08:10):
Amy, there are about 1500 people who are trapped on a US run base in Qatar right now, whowere on the way here.
President Trump took over and they stopped.
We had to start a diaper underground railroad there because they stopped distributingdiapers.
They got that turn back on, but it took a while.
And thanks to us and others, we were able to get that moving.
(08:31):
But it's really horrific.
And here's the thing.
We think President Trump was unaware of this because
This issue has support.
I've got MAGA folks and Bernie folks and everybody in between involved in Afghan EVAC.
These are folks from African American experience.
We're nonpartisan.
believe that anybody, anybody who believes in the idea of America, believes that thesefolks stood for us and deserve us to follow through on our commitments, you're welcome
(08:59):
here.
I'm doing your podcast today and then Matt Gaetz podcast on Wednesday, is a greatrepresentation of the full
Spectrum right and and it's the most American thing I've ever been a part of and we knowthat President Trump cares about this because he Brought the families of our final 13
fallen out on the stage at the RNC We know that he spent a bunch of time with him We knowthat he talked a lot about this and we think that he was sort of unaware or other things
(09:28):
had his interest, but he's
Yeah, I mean, and it's hard to speculate.
But one thing that crosses my mind is at the highest levels of government is incompetence.
You know, we have a secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, who's basically saidthat, these Afghans who came over, they don't there's no risk in Afghanistan anymore.
(09:51):
I'm going to read you a quote.
It says there are now notable improvements in the security and economic situation.
requiring the return of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan does not pose a threat to theirpersonal safety due to ongoing armed conflict or extraordinary and temporary conditions.
I mean, I know that's bullshit.
(10:12):
Yeah, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
And again, the secretary of Homeland Security, she's never served.
If we've got folks in the mega world calling the BS flag, how come the Trumpadministration isn't doing anything about
We've started to see progress, but it's not enough.
(10:34):
We saw him prevent the repatriation of around 40 Afghans from UAE, which is a place wherea bunch of folks, private people brought Afghans uh thanks to the generosity of the UAE.
But then they didn't really have a plan.
So we were able to step in and get the State Department moving to help them.
They got 17,000.
We had 40 left there and they were about to repatriate them.
(10:57):
Now we're pushing on Qatar.
uh
and Pakistan, and we know that the president, this is making it to the president.
We know that Seb Gorka cares about this.
It's Stephen Miller who's been in the way.
And, you know, it takes a lot to get the president to run through Stephen Miller, which isunfortunate.
But if we can make progress on this, we can make progress on other things.
(11:19):
And we know a lot of people care about this, but it's so important that all of thosepeople who were up on the news calling for Joe Biden's resignation, calling for Tony
Blinken's resignation,
All those people are rattling their sabers saying, I'm a greenberry, how do I fuckingserve?
I'm looking around for him right now and I'm not seeing him out there on the news.
And that makes me question their honesty, that makes me question whether or not they weredoing this because they cared.
(11:44):
I stand very strongly.
I yelled at Ron Klain, I yelled at President Biden, I yelled at everybody at the WhiteHouse.
And I'm doing the same thing again.
And we're gonna keep fighting because this is not a partisan issue.
This is an issue about the very idea of America and the very idea of your and my serviceand everybody you serve, right?
They can't turn us into liars.
And it's a national security concern because this is going to have repercussions forfuture conflicts.
(12:09):
We're never going to go into another conflict and not have to have people that we trust onthe ground sort of on our side.
Who's going to trust us in the future if this is how we treat our partners?
Sean, what will happen to these folks if they're deported back to Afghanistan?
(12:29):
Sure.
So whether you were here or on the Camp Asliya in Qatar or anywhere else around the world,if you have been outside of Afghanistan or if you served alongside us and you get sent
back to the Taliban, your life is over.
If you're a woman, you're going to be imprisoned, raped and tortured and probably killed.
oh Your life is over if you go back.
(12:52):
Right.
And it's not like I've heard people say, well, what if we find him another place to go?
Fuck that.
That's not what this is about.
This is about we made a promise.
said, hey, you stand shoulder to shoulder with us.
We're going to stand shoulder to shoulder with you.
We're going to make you an American.
You get to come here and start your life here and go after the American dream.
(13:12):
We sold them this idea of an American dream that is really far away from a lot of peoplein the best circumstances.
Right.
And now they're just trying.
I mean, we had 5000 Afghans a month coming and they everything down.
S.I.V.s are still processing.
But it's 200 a month now and they have to do everything on their own rather than the helpthat they have.
What is an SIV?
(13:34):
And SAV is a special immigrant visa holder.
They're the folks that were paid directly by the United States government.
And they represent a large portion of the wartime allies that need to come here, but notall of them.
And that doesn't include all of the family members that need to
Right.
Tell us about this, the Afghan evac program, the Battle Buddies.
This is the joint project between your organization and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans ofAmerica.
(14:00):
So tell us about that.
That's right.
So Battle Buddies is great, right?
And it was inspired because a man named Syed got taken by ICE at the courthouse right indowntown San Diego.
We saw the video.
Somebody sent me the video and said, please help us.
So we made it a thing.
We like pushed it out to the press.
We made it a viral thing.
(14:21):
And he was getting arrested by us saying, I'm an Afghan ally.
I stood with the United States government.
Syed didn't do anything wrong.
He crossed through CBP one.
He had to flee Afghanistan because the Taliban showed up at a wedding.
He was trying to wait for his S.I.V.
to come through.
uh And his brother was killed at that wedding.
So he and his wife fled to another country.
Then they made it to Brazil, trains, planes and automobiles up to the southern border.
(14:45):
They knocked on the front door like the last administration told them to do.
Through CBP-1, they were paroled into the country for two years.
He had an S.I.V.
uh application going and an asylum application going.
And he went to court for just a normal court date, just like he was told to.
He didn't break any rules, didn't commit any crimes.
(15:06):
And the government tried to dismiss his case and snatch him up.
And they did.
So I was thinking about this.
It happened in my backyard in San Diego.
like, you generally Afghan evac has been focused overseas, trying to get people herebecause once they got here, it was safe for them to be here.
Right.
And it used to be.
And I called up my battle buddy, Kai.
(15:29):
My friend Kyle Anhunter had just taken over as the CEO of IAVA, Iraq and AfghanistanVeterans of America.
And I said, hey, Kyle, what do you think about us getting the band back together and uhstarting this thing that is not meant to be a protest?
And that's the thing about Battle Buddies.
This is not meant to be a protest.
It's not a political statement.
This is a statement of solidarity from veterans and frontline civilians and people thathave been involved in this evacuation effort saying, they're with me.
(15:54):
I vouch for them.
They're one of us.
They stood with us.
We owe it to them to stand with them.
And I keep coming back to this idea of shoulder to shoulder, right?
They stood with us shoulder to shoulder in Afghanistan while we were fighting a war.
The least we can do is stand shoulder to shoulder with them while their lives in ourjustice system.
Not even our justice system, our immigration courts, which is separate from the justicesystem.
(16:18):
Yes.
what, is Sayid now?
What, what has happened there?
So he's still at the Otay Mesa Correctional Facility.
He established credible fear.
So he was in danger of deportation.
We raised a bunch of hell.
ah He did what's called a credible fear interview with an asylum officer.
He passed it, which means he starts all the way back over at the beginning of the line anddoes the asylum process.
(16:43):
And they won't let him out of jail.
Now we're trying to get him out.
Lots of members of Congress are involved, both Senator Schiff and Senator Padilla.
Congressman Scott Peters, Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs, Juan Vargas, uh Senator Chris Coons.
A lot of folks are involved in this and DHS just doesn't care.
(17:04):
uh So we're trying to make sure that Sayed gets his due and he will be able to stay hereas long as everything goes right because he has established credible fear.
His brother already has asylum and they had the same sort of story.
So I think
We hope that side will be okay.
And we're seeing this happen all over the place.
(17:24):
So what we did is we established this plan.
We established this program where veterans, front lines, civilians, anybody who worked inthis can sign up, say, Hey, I'm willing to do it.
We have about a thousand from across all 50 states in DC.
And we just, we've started to do our actions.
We actually just had one last week in San Diego and where I led 15 veterans down to thecourthouse for a man who were calling Abdul.
(17:49):
uh
And when we showed up there, ICE got real jumpy.
Yeah, good.
And they called in Federal Protective Service.
we're not there to protest, but we're veterans.
And as veterans, we have a hard time not talking shit to each other.
So there were, you know, four or five of us and we were like, hey, man, did you wear amask when you were in Iraq?
(18:11):
Did you wear a mask when you were in Afghanistan?
I didn't wear a mask when I was kicking indoors on boats, taking down terrorists and drugrunners.
I don't know.
Why do think these guys are wearing masks?
Like we couldn't sort of help ourselves.
They had like riot police in the hallways.
They were freaked out.
And we weren't trying to dial up the temperature until they started dialing it up.
(18:32):
then the good news is, is that Abdul walked out of there a free man.
Good.
So that's, that was a good feeling.
was a really tense environment though.
And they're not, they're not trying to deescalate anything.
They're trying to make this hard for people.
I feel like you have to bring attention to it.
It's almost like this is the only way right now.
(18:54):
You have to shame our federal government into doing the right thing.
mean, is an absolute shame that we are even talking about this.
These people are the people who stood with us side by side.
There are translators.
There are folks that risk their lives for us over there.
(19:17):
And now we treat them so poorly here.
I mean, I just, it's almost, I'm ashamed.
I'm really ashamed.
I'm really ashamed.
It's disappointing.
You know, so our approach is like, look, all those guys at ICE, they're choosing to bethere.
They don't have to be there.
And, you know, we're not trying to start a fight with them.
We don't want to start a fight.
(19:38):
If somebody starts fighting, we want to get it on camera because people need to knowwhat's happening.
But we're not trying to start a fight.
Also, if you're going to come get one of these guys, you're going to have to make itthrough a gauntlet of, you know, five, 10 of us not fighting, just we're there.
And we hope that they think twice when they have to push through veterans who serve thiscountry alongside those people they're trying to take.
(20:03):
It's really awful.
So what can, if you're just a listener of the show, you're trying to do the right thing,you care about America, which is probably why you're listening to Truth in the Barrel to
begin with, what can they do to support your effort?
Or maybe if they're a veteran, what can they do?
(20:25):
Or just even a non-veteran?
A few things, right?
Number one, we up until now, and we're trying to make the shift now, this has been an allvolunteer effort.
I've been through three jobs.
Like we have a bunch of people around this country who are fighting for this and have beendoing it, but it's a lot harder now that the White House doesn't want to hang out with us,
doesn't want to work with us.
(20:45):
So the only thing you can do is donate, donate to AfghanEvec, afghanevac.org slash donate.
Number two, sign up to be a battle buddy, afghanevac.org slash battle buddies.
And number three,
and this is the most important thing that you can do, call your member of Congress, nomatter where you live, no matter what, where you stand politically, call your member of
(21:06):
Congress and say this is wrong and you want it to change.
Yeah, those are very concrete things to do and we should.
mean, again, these are the people that stood by us side by side.
Tell me how you got involved in this, Sean.
You're a Navy veteran.
um did you get involved with this personally?
(21:28):
Were you over in Afghanistan?
How does that work?
So no, I didn't serve in Afghanistan.
I served off the coast of Iraq, protecting oil platforms, shocker.
And I did like drug ops and a bunch of other stuff.
I got involved with helping our wartime allies with helping SIVs after I got into themilitary.
I got into the military back in 2013.
In 2017, I met a guy named Lucky because I convened a press conference the first timePresident Trump targeted these folks, right?
(21:57):
He did the Muslim ban.
And we said, hey,
Like you do what you're going to do, but you need to know that this policy has a marketimpact on our wartime allies.
And I met two guys at that press conference, one named Wolf from Iraq and one named Luckyfrom Afghanistan.
Lucky and I stayed in touch.
And when all of this went down in April of 2021, we wrote some op-eds together talkingabout the closure of the war.
(22:22):
And I had said, you know, I think it's really important that we leave Afghanistan.
also think it's really important that we make sure that our wartime allies are going to besafe.
we make sure we're not leaving Afghanistan in the lurch.
Lucky wrote an op-ed talking about what it meant to him as not yet an American citizen,but living here and as an SIV.
He went back to Afghanistan, just like any Texan would do.
(22:46):
We told him you have until September 11th, 2021.
And so a bunch of Afghans went back.
And I texted him on the 13th and said, hey, brother, are you OK?
Do you need?
Like, do you need flights?
When are you leaving?
Like, what's going on?
I didn't hear from him.
So I started making phone calls getting pledges for money for flights for him.
(23:06):
And it was like $5,000 a flight.
So we were getting these pledges.
And he finally came up on comms on the night of the 14th.
And he said, hey, brother, I had to go to the top of this mountain because cell service isdown.
We're surrounded by the Taliban.
I think I'm going to die.
We grant my last wish and get my family back to San Diego.
(23:27):
I was crying.
And I said, yeah, of course, like whatever I can do.
So that launched me into this.
And then I was in like 20 different signal chats and I was like, signal chats, Facebookchats, Slack, name it, WhatsApp.
And I said, hey, I come from a background in emergency management, the Navy, politics, allof that.
(23:49):
I was like, hey guys, we're going to get somebody killed if we don't all talk.
So I started, African EBAC started just bringing people together.
to compare notes and make sure that we were leveraging all of the resources that we had tothe maximum extent.
Then instead of, we had 50 groups by the end of August helped about 50,000 people get out.
um In September, we started regular meetings with the State Department where we had agroup of like sort of all the different relevant parties involved in this work and the
(24:20):
partnership was born.
we've had an MOU with the State Department since 2022.
that we've been uh using to share information, make sure that we're killingmisinformation.
We helped the State Department build Enduring Welcome and the Coordinator for AfghanRelocation efforts.
it's been the most, or not present, Secretary Blinken said it was the most impactfulpublic-private partnership he's ever seen.
(24:45):
And we did it all for free.
And it's because of what Afghan people have inspired in the American people and veteransand service.
diplomats and others who served alongside them.
um It's been extraordinary.
So I got involved because I had a buddy stuff just like everybody else.
Luckily, uh I only had the one guy to worry about at the beginning.
(25:07):
And so I was able to focus on building a lot of this.
then sort of we've been very effective, right?
We've we had the relationships with the White House that we built.
We got President Biden to commit to doing this and he did he followed through on it.
And then we thought that President Trump because of the amount that he talked about andhow much he'd said he cared.
We thought that I'd hope Doge would make this faster, smarter, better.
(25:29):
But the reality was that that's not what Doge was doing,
Yeah.
And let's be real.
mean, during the Biden administration, it was not all a rose garden.
No.
mean, uh the plight of Afghan, uh our partners, lots of red tape.
was really hard to get here to the United States.
(25:51):
Your group did tremendous work, but it wasn't easy.
But then when the Trump administration came in, basically, he just stopped the wholeprogram.
of moving them and at all.
And so it's just, it's terrible.
And again, it's a shame.
And this is why we wanted to highlight this on a Devil's Cut because people need to knowabout this.
(26:16):
We are uh going against the promises that we made to these people.
uh From my perspective, I did two tours in that theater.
Now um I was an aviator.
So I was in the jet, certainly on my first tour was pretty much all flying and uh I didn'thave that uh direct contact that others did with many of the translators.
(26:46):
Although in my second tour, I had a lot of contact because I was on the ground.
I was in a planning role, an operations role and I did a month uh in Parwan, which was uh
where the Afghans had a prison where we had Taliban prisoners and we were trying to teachthe Afghan government how to create a justice system that was fair.
(27:10):
And in that process, um we had a lot of translators that worked there.
And I just can't imagine um turning our backs on them right now after their country hasfallen back to the Taliban.
And then my husband, who
was in the Navy.
(27:31):
uh And you typically don't think of, yeah, go Navy.
You typically don't think of the Navy and Navy veterans being in Afghanistan.
My husband did a year there.
Right after we were married, he got uh what was called an IA, an individual augment, whichmeant that the Army needed people.
(27:52):
They needed officers.
And he got voluntold.
um You're going to go do this for a year.
um And so he went to, uh where was he at?
He was in Kabul, one of those camps in Kabul.
And I actually think the timeframe that he was there, we were newly married.
(28:14):
I was there as well.
So we always kind of tease each other.
had honeymoon Afghanistan, although we were like 600 miles apart.
I was down in Helmand province and he was in Kabul.
But I think that um his,
position there was probably more dangerous than mine because he had to go in convoysaround Kabul and he had a lot of interface with the people in Afghanistan.
(28:37):
So this is an important issue for me personally, it's an important issue for my husband.
And I just, thank you for what you're doing.
And again, I think if you're listening out there, please support this organization.
Afghan evac.
Where can they find you again?
AfghanEvac.org, follow us on social media.
(28:59):
I have a little bit of a spicy social media, which, you know.
So do I.
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, right.
And look, some things are worth fighting for, right?
This thing is worth fighting for.
This is about our national honor.
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for your work in helping our Afghan friends right now in the United States.
(29:22):
Folks, Sean Van Diver, President and Founder of Afghan EVAC.
Thank you so much for signing up, Amy, and thank you for having me on the show.
I really appreciate it.
You bet, Sean.
Thank you.
m
Did you know that thousands of our Afghan partners who fought alongside us during the 20years of war in that country, who came to the United States so that their lives would be
saved, are now at risk of being deported back to Afghanistan?
Yes, the Trump administration has determined that all is well back in Afghanistan andthere's no risk to these people.
(00:26):
But of course, there's a huge risk.
We promised our Afghan partners that they could find a home here in the United States ifwe were to ever pull out of that country.
Well, we did.
Now we are reneging on that promise.
Here to talk about the plight of our Afghan partners and what America's post-9-11 veteransare doing to help them and to help raise awareness about what's happening to our Afghan
(00:54):
friends right now is Sean Van Diver.
president and founder of Afghan evac.
Sean is also a retired U.S.
Navy veteran.
Welcome to Truth in the Barrel, oh
Thanks so much for having me today, Amy.
We're really excited to be here.
Well, this is an important issue and I couldn't think of anyone better to talk about itbecause you are sort of the leader of fighting for m our Afghan partners right now around
(01:20):
the nation.
I want to start with the big picture here.
Can you tell our listeners who are these people and what's happening to them right nowhere in the United States?
Sure.
So again, thank you for having me on today.
The folks that we stand up to help are people who enabled the United States mission over20 years of war in Afghanistan.
(01:44):
We're very narrowly focused on Afghanistan, but these same principles apply to the folkswho helped us in Iraq, in Vietnam, so on and so forth.
Any time American troops, American servicemen and women go down range to fight in the nameof our freedom, fight for US interests, we can't do it alone.
We have to have help from local nationals because they know the landscape.
(02:07):
They know what to look out for.
They hear things that maybe we wouldn't hear.
They speak the language.
They understand the culture.
And these are folks who were interpreters, drivers, cultural advisors.
mean, trash truck drivers, but also drivers of our American troops.
They were people who served alongside our diplomats.
And it's even bigger than that.
So you have sort of two tracks.
(02:27):
You have the consular pathway, which is special visa holders.
People who worked directly for the United States government were paid by United Statesgovernment.
But a second track, which is smaller, uh they're in the refugee track, right?
And these are all people who worked uh in our interests.
Journalists who published stories about the Taliban, uh lawyers and prosecutors who putthem away.
(02:51):
These are Afghan partner forces who trained in the United States and fought and bledalongside our service members.
People who are service members of our Green Berets and Navy SEALs consider
brothers and sisters.
These are female helicopter pilots and female tactical platoon leaders andparliamentarians and NGO workers and anybody who stood up for the idea of democracy and is
(03:12):
now and now their lives are at risk because of their relationship with us.
Yeah, so they're over here.
uh We brought them over here or tried to bring as many as we could during the lastadministration under what's called temporary protective status.
And I'll ask you about that uh shortly here, but I want to get to what is happening tothem right now.
(03:36):
What is different now than a year ago or two years?
So it's important to think about this in two buckets, right?
One, you've got people who've already made it here, and then the other you've got peoplewho are still waiting.
There's about 195,000 people who made it here, and about 260,000 people who are stillwaiting to come.
uh The folks who made it here who are under temporary protected status, that's about10,000, but there's a bigger number of folks who are here under humanitarian parole.
(04:04):
When we flew them over here during the NEO, the Non-Combat and Evacuation Operation, manyof them
only had temporary status.
So uh we were moving Afghans here at a clip into durable status at a clip of about 5,000per month until January 20th.
At 12.01 PM, President Trump took over and around 8 PM that night on January 20th, heimplemented some executive orders.
(04:29):
One executive order stopped all refugee processing, which includes a ton of family.
There's about 15,000 family members, including 3000 individual
family members of active duty U.S.
military and about 2800 unaccompanied children who are here in the United States withfamily waiting to come over.
(04:49):
And look, we were moving it 5,000 a month under enduring welcome, which brought them hereunder a durable status.
Now, the folks who are already here from August of 2021, August to like September, Octoberof 2021, they came under a different program and many were still waiting because of our
bureaucracy to process.
(05:09):
President Trump took away their temporary protected status, they're ending humanitarianparole, and they're targeting these folks at green card interviews.
People who are special marine visa holders are just going to get their biometrics or aregoing for a check-in, they're getting snatched up.
People who are going to court because they came over through the southern border legally,they went through CBP-1, an app that Homeland Security designed to...
(05:37):
to lower the number of illegal crossings.
And it's just heartbreaking to so many veterans like me and like you and like so manyothers to watch our friends or people like our friends who stood up for the idea of
democracy.
And now this administration is snatching them off the streets from their families andthey're doing nothing wrong.
Why do you think this is happening?
(05:59):
Why is happening?
Stephen Miller is the reason why this is happening, right?
You've got Stephen Miller at the White House, a guy named Robert Law, who's about to beconfirmed, unless we do something about it, as the Undersecretary for Policy, Plans and
Strategy at the Department of Homeland Security.
And then until last week, there was a woman named Mary Bishoping at the State Department,who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Afghanistan.
(06:22):
She lost that job.
She's been reassigned and it hasn't been announced where yet.
uh
sort of started talking about her because she is Afghan herself and worked on thewithdrawal investigation and then started lobbying for repatriation of people that are
stuck at the various sites around the world.
Then there's one more person at State Department who's like a big problem.
His name's Spencer Cretion.
(06:44):
He's the senior bureau official for population refugees and migration.
And PRM is the bureau.
where refugees used to come through.
These people were responsible for getting us to 100,000, 125,000 refugees every year.
Incredible work, hard work.
Their job is to protect people, but now they're being repurposed to repatriate, deportpeople around the world.
(07:09):
So those three people and then the minions among them, but Stephen Miller is the realreason.
Yeah.
And I'm guessing these folks who the Trump administration has put in charge, probablynever served in Afghanistan.
know?
And it's just, to me, it's an absolute tragedy.
How many total are we talking?
(07:30):
I mean, I've read reports that there are 200,000 Afghan allies resettled here in theUnited States.
that it?
And there's more still, as you said, to come.
m But when you think back to Vietnam, millions of people had to come.
For this, it's like a total of less than 500,000.
We can take that.
(07:50):
We have a strong jobs market.
Still, we think, we don't know what's going to happen now.
And we don't know if we're to be able to trust the numbers.
uh we have a strong jobs market, jobs that need to be filled.
And they're taking a bunch of people out of the country.
These are folks who can come and help us.
And we made them a promise.
We made a commitment.
(08:10):
Amy, there are about 1500 people who are trapped on a US run base in Qatar right now, whowere on the way here.
President Trump took over and they stopped.
We had to start a diaper underground railroad there because they stopped distributingdiapers.
They got that turn back on, but it took a while.
And thanks to us and others, we were able to get that moving.
(08:31):
But it's really horrific.
And here's the thing.
We think President Trump was unaware of this because
This issue has support.
I've got MAGA folks and Bernie folks and everybody in between involved in Afghan EVAC.
These are folks from African American experience.
We're nonpartisan.
believe that anybody, anybody who believes in the idea of America, believes that thesefolks stood for us and deserve us to follow through on our commitments, you're welcome
(08:59):
here.
I'm doing your podcast today and then Matt Gaetz podcast on Wednesday, is a greatrepresentation of the full
Spectrum right and and it's the most American thing I've ever been a part of and we knowthat President Trump cares about this because he Brought the families of our final 13
fallen out on the stage at the RNC We know that he spent a bunch of time with him We knowthat he talked a lot about this and we think that he was sort of unaware or other things
(09:28):
had his interest, but he's
Yeah, I mean, and it's hard to speculate.
But one thing that crosses my mind is at the highest levels of government is incompetence.
You know, we have a secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, who's basically saidthat, these Afghans who came over, they don't there's no risk in Afghanistan anymore.
(09:51):
I'm going to read you a quote.
It says there are now notable improvements in the security and economic situation.
requiring the return of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan does not pose a threat to theirpersonal safety due to ongoing armed conflict or extraordinary and temporary conditions.
I mean, I know that's bullshit.
(10:12):
Yeah, it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
And again, the secretary of Homeland Security, she's never served.
If we've got folks in the mega world calling the BS flag, how come the Trumpadministration isn't doing anything about
We've started to see progress, but it's not enough.
(10:34):
We saw him prevent the repatriation of around 40 Afghans from UAE, which is a place wherea bunch of folks, private people brought Afghans uh thanks to the generosity of the UAE.
But then they didn't really have a plan.
So we were able to step in and get the State Department moving to help them.
They got 17,000.
We had 40 left there and they were about to repatriate them.
(10:57):
Now we're pushing on Qatar.
uh
and Pakistan, and we know that the president, this is making it to the president.
We know that Seb Gorka cares about this.
It's Stephen Miller who's been in the way.
And, you know, it takes a lot to get the president to run through Stephen Miller, which isunfortunate.
But if we can make progress on this, we can make progress on other things.
(11:19):
And we know a lot of people care about this, but it's so important that all of thosepeople who were up on the news calling for Joe Biden's resignation, calling for Tony
Blinken's resignation,
All those people are rattling their sabers saying, I'm a greenberry, how do I fuckingserve?
I'm looking around for him right now and I'm not seeing him out there on the news.
And that makes me question their honesty, that makes me question whether or not they weredoing this because they cared.
(11:44):
I stand very strongly.
I yelled at Ron Klain, I yelled at President Biden, I yelled at everybody at the WhiteHouse.
And I'm doing the same thing again.
And we're gonna keep fighting because this is not a partisan issue.
This is an issue about the very idea of America and the very idea of your and my serviceand everybody you serve, right?
They can't turn us into liars.
And it's a national security concern because this is going to have repercussions forfuture conflicts.
(12:09):
We're never going to go into another conflict and not have to have people that we trust onthe ground sort of on our side.
Who's going to trust us in the future if this is how we treat our partners?
Sean, what will happen to these folks if they're deported back to Afghanistan?
(12:29):
Sure.
So whether you were here or on the Camp Asliya in Qatar or anywhere else around the world,if you have been outside of Afghanistan or if you served alongside us and you get sent
back to the Taliban, your life is over.
If you're a woman, you're going to be imprisoned, raped and tortured and probably killed.
oh Your life is over if you go back.
(12:52):
Right.
And it's not like I've heard people say, well, what if we find him another place to go?
Fuck that.
That's not what this is about.
This is about we made a promise.
said, hey, you stand shoulder to shoulder with us.
We're going to stand shoulder to shoulder with you.
We're going to make you an American.
You get to come here and start your life here and go after the American dream.
(13:12):
We sold them this idea of an American dream that is really far away from a lot of peoplein the best circumstances.
Right.
And now they're just trying.
I mean, we had 5000 Afghans a month coming and they everything down.
S.I.V.s are still processing.
But it's 200 a month now and they have to do everything on their own rather than the helpthat they have.
What is an SIV?
(13:34):
And SAV is a special immigrant visa holder.
They're the folks that were paid directly by the United States government.
And they represent a large portion of the wartime allies that need to come here, but notall of them.
And that doesn't include all of the family members that need to
Right.
Tell us about this, the Afghan evac program, the Battle Buddies.
This is the joint project between your organization and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans ofAmerica.
(14:00):
So tell us about that.
That's right.
So Battle Buddies is great, right?
And it was inspired because a man named Syed got taken by ICE at the courthouse right indowntown San Diego.
We saw the video.
Somebody sent me the video and said, please help us.
So we made it a thing.
We like pushed it out to the press.
We made it a viral thing.
(14:21):
And he was getting arrested by us saying, I'm an Afghan ally.
I stood with the United States government.
Syed didn't do anything wrong.
He crossed through CBP one.
He had to flee Afghanistan because the Taliban showed up at a wedding.
He was trying to wait for his S.I.V.
to come through.
uh And his brother was killed at that wedding.
So he and his wife fled to another country.
Then they made it to Brazil, trains, planes and automobiles up to the southern border.
(14:45):
They knocked on the front door like the last administration told them to do.
Through CBP-1, they were paroled into the country for two years.
He had an S.I.V.
uh application going and an asylum application going.
And he went to court for just a normal court date, just like he was told to.
He didn't break any rules, didn't commit any crimes.
(15:06):
And the government tried to dismiss his case and snatch him up.
And they did.
So I was thinking about this.
It happened in my backyard in San Diego.
like, you generally Afghan evac has been focused overseas, trying to get people herebecause once they got here, it was safe for them to be here.
Right.
And it used to be.
And I called up my battle buddy, Kai.
(15:29):
My friend Kyle Anhunter had just taken over as the CEO of IAVA, Iraq and AfghanistanVeterans of America.
And I said, hey, Kyle, what do you think about us getting the band back together and uhstarting this thing that is not meant to be a protest?
And that's the thing about Battle Buddies.
This is not meant to be a protest.
It's not a political statement.
This is a statement of solidarity from veterans and frontline civilians and people thathave been involved in this evacuation effort saying, they're with me.
(15:54):
I vouch for them.
They're one of us.
They stood with us.
We owe it to them to stand with them.
And I keep coming back to this idea of shoulder to shoulder, right?
They stood with us shoulder to shoulder in Afghanistan while we were fighting a war.
The least we can do is stand shoulder to shoulder with them while their lives in ourjustice system.
Not even our justice system, our immigration courts, which is separate from the justicesystem.
(16:18):
Yes.
what, is Sayid now?
What, what has happened there?
So he's still at the Otay Mesa Correctional Facility.
He established credible fear.
So he was in danger of deportation.
We raised a bunch of hell.
ah He did what's called a credible fear interview with an asylum officer.
He passed it, which means he starts all the way back over at the beginning of the line anddoes the asylum process.
(16:43):
And they won't let him out of jail.
Now we're trying to get him out.
Lots of members of Congress are involved, both Senator Schiff and Senator Padilla.
Congressman Scott Peters, Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs, Juan Vargas, uh Senator Chris Coons.
A lot of folks are involved in this and DHS just doesn't care.
(17:04):
uh So we're trying to make sure that Sayed gets his due and he will be able to stay hereas long as everything goes right because he has established credible fear.
His brother already has asylum and they had the same sort of story.
So I think
We hope that side will be okay.
And we're seeing this happen all over the place.
(17:24):
So what we did is we established this plan.
We established this program where veterans, front lines, civilians, anybody who worked inthis can sign up, say, Hey, I'm willing to do it.
We have about a thousand from across all 50 states in DC.
And we just, we've started to do our actions.
We actually just had one last week in San Diego and where I led 15 veterans down to thecourthouse for a man who were calling Abdul.
(17:49):
uh
And when we showed up there, ICE got real jumpy.
Yeah, good.
And they called in Federal Protective Service.
we're not there to protest, but we're veterans.
And as veterans, we have a hard time not talking shit to each other.
So there were, you know, four or five of us and we were like, hey, man, did you wear amask when you were in Iraq?
(18:11):
Did you wear a mask when you were in Afghanistan?
I didn't wear a mask when I was kicking indoors on boats, taking down terrorists and drugrunners.
I don't know.
Why do think these guys are wearing masks?
Like we couldn't sort of help ourselves.
They had like riot police in the hallways.
They were freaked out.
And we weren't trying to dial up the temperature until they started dialing it up.
(18:32):
then the good news is, is that Abdul walked out of there a free man.
Good.
So that's, that was a good feeling.
was a really tense environment though.
And they're not, they're not trying to deescalate anything.
They're trying to make this hard for people.
I feel like you have to bring attention to it.
It's almost like this is the only way right now.
(18:54):
You have to shame our federal government into doing the right thing.
mean, is an absolute shame that we are even talking about this.
These people are the people who stood with us side by side.
There are translators.
There are folks that risk their lives for us over there.
(19:17):
And now we treat them so poorly here.
I mean, I just, it's almost, I'm ashamed.
I'm really ashamed.
I'm really ashamed.
It's disappointing.
You know, so our approach is like, look, all those guys at ICE, they're choosing to bethere.
They don't have to be there.
And, you know, we're not trying to start a fight with them.
We don't want to start a fight.
(19:38):
If somebody starts fighting, we want to get it on camera because people need to knowwhat's happening.
But we're not trying to start a fight.
Also, if you're going to come get one of these guys, you're going to have to make itthrough a gauntlet of, you know, five, 10 of us not fighting, just we're there.
And we hope that they think twice when they have to push through veterans who serve thiscountry alongside those people they're trying to take.
(20:03):
It's really awful.
So what can, if you're just a listener of the show, you're trying to do the right thing,you care about America, which is probably why you're listening to Truth in the Barrel to
begin with, what can they do to support your effort?
Or maybe if they're a veteran, what can they do?
(20:25):
Or just even a non-veteran?
A few things, right?
Number one, we up until now, and we're trying to make the shift now, this has been an allvolunteer effort.
I've been through three jobs.
Like we have a bunch of people around this country who are fighting for this and have beendoing it, but it's a lot harder now that the White House doesn't want to hang out with us,
doesn't want to work with us.
(20:45):
So the only thing you can do is donate, donate to AfghanEvec, afghanevac.org slash donate.
Number two, sign up to be a battle buddy, afghanevac.org slash battle buddies.
And number three,
and this is the most important thing that you can do, call your member of Congress, nomatter where you live, no matter what, where you stand politically, call your member of
(21:06):
Congress and say this is wrong and you want it to change.
Yeah, those are very concrete things to do and we should.
mean, again, these are the people that stood by us side by side.
Tell me how you got involved in this, Sean.
You're a Navy veteran.
um did you get involved with this personally?
(21:28):
Were you over in Afghanistan?
How does that work?
So no, I didn't serve in Afghanistan.
I served off the coast of Iraq, protecting oil platforms, shocker.
And I did like drug ops and a bunch of other stuff.
I got involved with helping our wartime allies with helping SIVs after I got into themilitary.
I got into the military back in 2013.
In 2017, I met a guy named Lucky because I convened a press conference the first timePresident Trump targeted these folks, right?
(21:57):
He did the Muslim ban.
And we said, hey,
Like you do what you're going to do, but you need to know that this policy has a marketimpact on our wartime allies.
And I met two guys at that press conference, one named Wolf from Iraq and one named Luckyfrom Afghanistan.
Lucky and I stayed in touch.
And when all of this went down in April of 2021, we wrote some op-eds together talkingabout the closure of the war.
(22:22):
And I had said, you know, I think it's really important that we leave Afghanistan.
also think it's really important that we make sure that our wartime allies are going to besafe.
we make sure we're not leaving Afghanistan in the lurch.
Lucky wrote an op-ed talking about what it meant to him as not yet an American citizen,but living here and as an SIV.
He went back to Afghanistan, just like any Texan would do.
(22:46):
We told him you have until September 11th, 2021.
And so a bunch of Afghans went back.
And I texted him on the 13th and said, hey, brother, are you OK?
Do you need?
Like, do you need flights?
When are you leaving?
Like, what's going on?
I didn't hear from him.
So I started making phone calls getting pledges for money for flights for him.
(23:06):
And it was like $5,000 a flight.
So we were getting these pledges.
And he finally came up on comms on the night of the 14th.
And he said, hey, brother, I had to go to the top of this mountain because cell service isdown.
We're surrounded by the Taliban.
I think I'm going to die.
We grant my last wish and get my family back to San Diego.
(23:27):
I was crying.
And I said, yeah, of course, like whatever I can do.
So that launched me into this.
And then I was in like 20 different signal chats and I was like, signal chats, Facebookchats, Slack, name it, WhatsApp.
And I said, hey, I come from a background in emergency management, the Navy, politics, allof that.
(23:49):
I was like, hey guys, we're going to get somebody killed if we don't all talk.
So I started, African EBAC started just bringing people together.
to compare notes and make sure that we were leveraging all of the resources that we had tothe maximum extent.
Then instead of, we had 50 groups by the end of August helped about 50,000 people get out.
um In September, we started regular meetings with the State Department where we had agroup of like sort of all the different relevant parties involved in this work and the
(24:20):
partnership was born.
we've had an MOU with the State Department since 2022.
that we've been uh using to share information, make sure that we're killingmisinformation.
We helped the State Department build Enduring Welcome and the Coordinator for AfghanRelocation efforts.
it's been the most, or not present, Secretary Blinken said it was the most impactfulpublic-private partnership he's ever seen.
(24:45):
And we did it all for free.
And it's because of what Afghan people have inspired in the American people and veteransand service.
diplomats and others who served alongside them.
um It's been extraordinary.
So I got involved because I had a buddy stuff just like everybody else.
Luckily, uh I only had the one guy to worry about at the beginning.
(25:07):
And so I was able to focus on building a lot of this.
then sort of we've been very effective, right?
We've we had the relationships with the White House that we built.
We got President Biden to commit to doing this and he did he followed through on it.
And then we thought that President Trump because of the amount that he talked about andhow much he'd said he cared.
We thought that I'd hope Doge would make this faster, smarter, better.
(25:29):
But the reality was that that's not what Doge was doing,
Yeah.
And let's be real.
mean, during the Biden administration, it was not all a rose garden.
No.
mean, uh the plight of Afghan, uh our partners, lots of red tape.
was really hard to get here to the United States.
(25:51):
Your group did tremendous work, but it wasn't easy.
But then when the Trump administration came in, basically, he just stopped the wholeprogram.
of moving them and at all.
And so it's just, it's terrible.
And again, it's a shame.
And this is why we wanted to highlight this on a Devil's Cut because people need to knowabout this.
(26:16):
We are uh going against the promises that we made to these people.
uh From my perspective, I did two tours in that theater.
Now um I was an aviator.
So I was in the jet, certainly on my first tour was pretty much all flying and uh I didn'thave that uh direct contact that others did with many of the translators.
(26:46):
Although in my second tour, I had a lot of contact because I was on the ground.
I was in a planning role, an operations role and I did a month uh in Parwan, which was uh
where the Afghans had a prison where we had Taliban prisoners and we were trying to teachthe Afghan government how to create a justice system that was fair.
(27:10):
And in that process, um we had a lot of translators that worked there.
And I just can't imagine um turning our backs on them right now after their country hasfallen back to the Taliban.
And then my husband, who
was in the Navy.
(27:31):
uh And you typically don't think of, yeah, go Navy.
You typically don't think of the Navy and Navy veterans being in Afghanistan.
My husband did a year there.
Right after we were married, he got uh what was called an IA, an individual augment, whichmeant that the Army needed people.
(27:52):
They needed officers.
And he got voluntold.
um You're going to go do this for a year.
um And so he went to, uh where was he at?
He was in Kabul, one of those camps in Kabul.
And I actually think the timeframe that he was there, we were newly married.
(28:14):
I was there as well.
So we always kind of tease each other.
had honeymoon Afghanistan, although we were like 600 miles apart.
I was down in Helmand province and he was in Kabul.
But I think that um his,
position there was probably more dangerous than mine because he had to go in convoysaround Kabul and he had a lot of interface with the people in Afghanistan.
(28:37):
So this is an important issue for me personally, it's an important issue for my husband.
And I just, thank you for what you're doing.
And again, I think if you're listening out there, please support this organization.
Afghan evac.
Where can they find you again?
AfghanEvac.org, follow us on social media.
(28:59):
I have a little bit of a spicy social media, which, you know.
So do I.
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, right.
And look, some things are worth fighting for, right?
This thing is worth fighting for.
This is about our national honor.
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for your work in helping our Afghan friends right now in the United States.
(29:22):
Folks, Sean Van Diver, President and Founder of Afghan EVAC.
Thank you so much for signing up, Amy, and thank you for having me on the show.
I really appreciate it.
You bet, Sean.
Thank you.
m
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