Afghan allies struggle in Minnesota after funding cuts: ‘What will I do?’

Abdul Saboor Qaderi finally escaped Afghanistan with his family last fall, but building a new life in Minnesota has brought a new array of hardships for the college-educated father of five.

Federal funding has dried up to aid Afghans who, like Qaderi, helped American forces during the war. The government no longer pays for their airfare, or links them with agencies that can help them find housing, jobs and other services during their early months in America.

Qaderi, who spent years as a researcher for a French consultancy in Kabul, worries about finding a job, a car and a home.

“I am thinking sometimes, what will I do in the future?” Qaderi asked as his baby girl and toddler son napped on the couch. “What should I do in the future?”

While President Donald Trump has suspended refugee admissions upon taking office in January, a trickle of Afghan allies has been making their way to the U.S. in recent months. But the cuts in government assistance programs mean an isolated and stressful transition for many recent arrivals.

“There is support available, but it’s not to the extent that it was in the past,” said Mahdi Surosh, project manager for a program to help Afghans at the Center for Victims of Torture.

More than 180,000 Afghans have arrived in the U.S. since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, under a patchwork of immigration statuses. Many were airlifted out of Kabul to American military bases at the time and received humanitarian parole. Some came as refugees, others as asylum-seekers, and many, like Qaderi, were admitted under special immigrant visas (SIVs). About 9,000 Afghans were also granted temporary protected status (TPS), which the Trump administration recently decided to terminate, claiming that Afghanistan has seen notable improvements in its security and economic situation.

Qaderi and his family flew to a former American military base in Qatar last fall, but he couldn’t afford to pay for their journey to the U.S. after barely making a living under the Taliban regime. He coordinated with the charitable organization No One Left Behind to cover the flight costs, and decided to move to the Twin Cities because an Afghan friend resettled here a year earlier.

He found a nonprofit to cover his housing in St. Paul for the first four months, but Qaderi received none of the usual funds to help Afghans start over in the U.S. Still, he gradually figured out the bus system, and a friend gave him a bicycle that he used to travel to the Social Security Administration to get his legal documents. He learned how to sign up for initial benefits covering food and health care through Ramsey County. Qaderi speaks English, but he is still not sure how to find a job — especially the office jobs he’s used to working.

His housing lease will be up in a few months. “If I’m jobless, how can I rent? When I don’t have a credit score, what should I do?” he wondered.

Nasreen Sajady said the Afghan Cultural Society, where she is executive director, has seen an influx of people coming in for support “who are lost.” She noted that refugee agencies typically find newcomers housing, place them in jobs, and teach people to use the bus system, get bank accounts and navigate American bureaucracy. “All of those things fell off. And so once they cut the services, all of a sudden people had to figure out all these things on their own.”

The organization has 25 Afghans working to support the newcomers, but Sajady believes it’s not enough to meet the expanding need.

“We are starting to drown,” she said.

Local leaders who work with the Afghan community, including Sajady, said they weren’t aware of any Afghans in Minnesota affected by the revocation of TPS. Ahmed Shah, an Afghan who has helped Qaderi and other local Afghan families, said that he knows of some Afghans receiving notices about their TPS being terminated. But they had already secured green cards through other immigration pathways, he added, so the revocation doesn’t affect them.

Sajady said many walk-ins at the Afghan Cultural Society also came to the U.S. through the Welcome Corps, a program started under President Joe Biden that allowed American citizens to form sponsor groups to host refugees. After the Trump administration ended the program, those groups lost funding to prepare them to receive the newcomers.

Surosh said a lot of Afghans he works with at the Center for Victims of Torture in St. Paul are also worried because they have family members whose documents were being processed to come to the U.S., but they don’t know what will happen now. “And also, here in the U.S. the services for people who come here are very limited compared to the past, so that’s also something that makes people nervous.”

Without a relative or friend to offer support at this point, “it would be very difficult to manage a new life in a very different country and very different system,” he said.

In January, the U.S. State Department terminated all refugee reception and placement service contracts, including services for people with SIVs. They can still access some programs if they call a refugee resettlement agency, along with government benefits available to most low-income residents.

At the Minnesota Council of Churches, Halil Poya said the agency can help people apply for a state-funded program called Refugee Cash Assistance if they don’t have children, and work with them to fill out applications for health insurance. But they can’t help with housing “because there is no resettlement program anymore.”

Before this year, Poya explained, each person received $1,125 that was used before their arrival to secure housing and other necessities. The Trump administration recently ended its contract with nine refugee resettlement agencies, including Episcopal Migration Ministries, of which the council was an affiliate.

“If any Afghan family comes through on their own, they have to be prepared … especially for the first two or three months, it’s very difficult for them to survive because especially the housing and the other things are very expensive,” said Poya, a Refugee Cash Assistance specialist at the council.

Back in Afghanistan, Qaderi compiled information on security, education, agriculture and other areas to fulfill contracts with the U.S. government as an employee at Paris-based Altai Consulting from 2005 to 2019. Colleagues at the firm submitted letters for Qaderi’s SIV application stating that he had facilitated research by traveling with staff and arranging meetings and logistics, providing translations, and conducting interviews and focus groups with civilians and government representatives. The letters said his work was critical to the success of several U.S.-funded projects and resulted in his exposure to numerous threats in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban returned to power, Qaderi sold some gold, borrowed money from family and took sporadic work to survive. He received an SIV in late November and spent four months in Qatar, where his wife gave birth to their daughter. The couple’s four sons range in age from 2 to 13.

In Minnesota, he panicked when his infant daughter became sick in the middle of the night. Qaderi called his Afghan friend to come and take him to the hospital. His state medical insurance had not come through yet, and the hospital sent him a bill for more than $2,000. He is concerned about how he’ll get a car and start earning a living again. But he also hears from Afghans in other states, like California, about how crowded it is and the challenges of finding jobs and rentals.

“Minnesota seems like a very good place,” said Qaderi.