This is betrayal.

On Monday, May 12, the Trump Administration announced it will end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Afghan refugees.

Over 14,000 people—including women who fled the Taliban, allies who served the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, and children growing up in safety in the U.S.—are now being told to leave.

The Department of Homeland Security claims conditions in Afghanistan are now “safe” and have “improved.” That’s a lie. The Taliban controls the country and has established a system of gender apartheid. The regime has issued nearly 150 edicts explicitly targeting women and girls. Women are brutally punished for walking alone, and girls as young as 10 are barred from attending school. Women are not allowed to work outside the home. Women are even forbidden from speaking to one another in public. And people who worked with Americans are hunted.

A veteran who helped evacuate some Afghan families after Kabul fell to the Taliban regime said it best:

“You’re in danger. The Taliban is not playing around with this. People are dying, and they will continue to die.”

He added:

“Secretary [of Homeland Security] Noem says it's safe? Then let her go to Afghanistan with me. Let her get a job there as a woman. Let her speak in public. Because Afghan women can’t.”

This is unconscionable.

Legal action has already begun. CASA, with lawyers from Georgetown Law and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, has filed suit to stop the termination. Why? Because DHS didn’t follow the law. No formal notice. No time for families to prepare. Just a sudden death sentence, dressed up as paperwork.

This decision isn’t just illegal. It is cruel.

It throws Afghan women back into the arms of the Taliban. It rips apart families. It puts allies of the U.S. military in the crosshairs. It breaks every promise we made when we said, “Help us, and we will protect you.”

Meanwhile, the same Trump administration is flying in white South Africans claiming persecution—while deporting Afghan women to the world’s most brutal gender apartheid regime.

The Feminist Majority Foundation has stood with Afghan women since 1996—when the Taliban first banned them from work, school, and public life. We’ve exposed the beatings, the arrests, the buried alive stories others were too afraid to tell.

We’ve brought Afghan women to speak at the United Nations. We’ve worked with diplomats, human rights lawyers, and exiled Afghan leaders to make the world listen.

Now, we are leading the push to have the UN declare gender apartheid a crime against humanity. We continuously gather signatures, build pressure, and force action on the global stage.

We’ve never stopped fighting for the women of Afghanistan.

And we won’t now.

📞 Call your two U.S. Senators and Representative:

your senators 

Say this:

“I am shocked that our country would betray the Afghan refugees who are here under Temporary Protected Status. I urge you to do everything you can to speak up against this horrific turn of events.”

This is our moment to say: We do not abandon those we called friends. We do not deport women into darkness and persecution by a cruel regime. And we do not lie to ourselves about what this country stands for. We must look at the reality in Afghanistan – it is run by a cruel regime that has enforced gender apartheid for nearly four years.

Stand with the women of Afghanistan. Stand with allies. Stand with the truth.

Act now.