Veterans demand help for Afghan allies

lum system will only delay the vetting process, but that the act — which would include more security vetting for Afghans already here — would make that happen sooner.

“This isn’t political,” Zeller told The Dispatch. “This is literally a matter of life and death.”

COLUMBUS – To James Powers, who served in the Army in Iraq, a federal bill that would help American allies from Afghanistan is a veterans’ issue.

A Canton resident, Powers was among a small group of veterans and Afghans from across the country who gathered at Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s Columbus office last week, hoping to get the senator to understand the importance of the Afghan Adjustment Act.

If passed, the bill would offer an option for permanent legal status for approximately 79,000 Afghans who came to the United States following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021. About 650 are living in Columbus.

It also would potentially provide pathways for an additional 300,000 Afghan interpreters and others still in the country who helped American troops during the war in Afghanistan. They were told, when they agreed to help, that they would not be left for dead when American troops withdrew from their country, explained Powers’ fellow veteran Matt Zeller, of Fairfax, Virginia.

We don’t leave fallen comrades,” Powers said. “Those creeds, those oaths we stand by, they’ve got to matter.”

As three others stood on the curb on West Broad Street — American and Afghanistan flags in their hands whipping in the wind — Powers and Zeller went into the Huntington Plaza office building, hoping to finally get a meeting with someone in the office after asking for one for weeks.

Powers, 37, was in Columbus as part of a tour that began on Sept.14 in front of thenation’sCapitol,whereaboutadozen Afghan natives and U.S. veterans sat outside for 15 days and nights on what they call a “firewatch,”a military term for standing guard or watch. Columbus was the first stop on a na- tionwide firewatch tour in part because Powers and Zeller, who were part of the group that gathered in Washington, D.C., knew Portman helped to evacuate Afghan allies last year. The next stop was scheduled to be in Indiana.

The majority of Afghans who came to America following the fall of Kabul came into the country as humanitarian parolees.

Parolees can stay in the United States legally for two years, and then they must seek permanent legal status through the asylum system.

But the required immigration court proceedings can take years as the courts are backlogged with more than 1.8 million pending cases. Without the bill being passed, thousands of Afghans may be deported or wait years to find out if they can legally stay.

Powers and Zeller, 40, who served in Afghanistan and was in the Army from 2002 to 2015, spoke at length with Michael Dustman, Portman’s director of constituent services.

First, they thanked Dustman for the work the office and Portman did to help get Afghans who helped the United States armed forces out of danger. Then, they began to explain why the Afghan Adjustment Act is so important, and, they believe, misunderstood.

Dustman asked questions and offered some information on other studies, bills and work the office has done.

“I appreciate what you guys are doing,” Dustman said when Zeller asked what they could do to get Portman’s support on the bill. “I’ll just ask the senator outright if he has a position on it.”

Portman’s office released a statement on the bill to The Dispatch during the meeting with the veterans saying the senator does not support it.

“It treats unvetted, random Afghans as if they were former partners when, in fact, more than 40 percent of those evacuated were not our partners,” Portman said in the statement.

The statement mentions reports from government agencies saying that the security screenings during the evacuation of Afghans were “deficient and deviated from existing regulations and procedures for vetting, and as a result, multiple security concerns being paroled into our communities.”

Zeller said he believes that waiting for the Afghans here to go through the asy-

And Zeller, who trained Afghans in American war techniques and strategies, said that it could become a national security issue due to the knowledge of those who were left behind. He worries that it could be dangerous for the United States to get a reputation for not keeping promises, too.

Safi Rauf, an Afghan American and U.S. Navy veteran and reservist who served in Afghanistan with Joint Special Operations Command, joined the meeting with Dustman after it started.

This bill is exactly what every Republican is asking for: enhanced vetting,” Rauf, of New York City, told The Dispatch outside before the meeting. “This is the bill that everybody is asking for. It’s just the misinformation that is spread is putting a lot of concern into these senators’ front-view mirror.”

Zeller said the reports Portman refers to in his statement don’t give the full picture of what happened and that if the act isn’t passed into law, there will be a real cost as Afghans who helped the U.S. are being “hunted down and killed.”

A Human Rights Watch report details how the Taliban targeted more than 100 former Afghanistan police and intelligence officers in the days after the U.S evacuation, including searching for those with ties to the U.S

“No one is going to believe us in the future,” Zeller said. “We’re doing this to finish the mission for them.”

Rauf began the firewatch at the Capitol last month with his brother Anees Khalil, a former federal contractor for the U.S. government in Afghanistan, after a firewatch for an act to expand healthcare for veterans was successful and the bill was passed.

Rauf said if this act were passed, it would be “the first right thing to happen since the evacuation.” between the Black community and the police and every blue-ribbon panel report.

“Since the fall (of Kabul), everything’s been downhill,” he said.

Thirty-three years of trauma, of fights,” Roley said. “Thirteen different blue ribbon panels. Thirteen separate sets of promises that were broken. And not to give us what we needed to move forward, but just to appease.”

Families of those who had been killed had begged the DOJ to investigate Cincinnati police. Even the Sentinels, Cincinnati’s Black officers’ group, had requested a federal investigation nearly a year before the Two in 24. But they didn’t come. Instead, Gerhardstein worked with local attorneys Ken Lawson and ScottGreenwoodwhousedthosereports to draft a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the Cincinnati Black United Front and the ACLU.

It also cited ongoing evidence of racial profiling after a statistician reviewed all the traffic tickets issued in previous years for the number of Black people stopped and the locations, proving the disparity of traffic enforcement in Cincinnati.

When they filed the lawsuit, Gerhardstein extended an invitation to the city.

“We invited the city and the FOP to join us in a community-wide collaboration,” Gerhardstein said. “The only condition we put on this offer was whatever happens, it’s got to end with a court order. We don’t want another blue ribbon panel. We don’t want another handshake.”

Then came the 15th death of an unarmed Black man: Timothy Thomas

The city erupted. The mayor invited the Department of Justice to Cincinnati to investigate for civil rights violations.

This is where Cincinnati diverged from other cities whose police departments had a pattern or practice investigationbytheDepartmentofJustice.U.S District Judge Susan Dlott merged Gerhardstein’s racial profiling lawsuit with the DOJ investigation’s findings.

Dlott presided over the negotiations as all sides came to four central terms: h Bias-free policing h Use of force reform, including lesslethal response h Accountability – including rapid re- sponse h Community problem-oriented policing It was something that was forward thinking,” Roley said of the agreement. That we can get out of this conundrum of being victimized and then the oppressor.”

The agreement changed the way Cincinnati police approach a scene. Every officer learns the SARA model: Scan, Analyze, Respond, Assess. It is meant to eliminate knee-jerk reactions.

“The essence of public safety is the public word,” Gerhardstein said. “The metric for public safety is not arrest. ... In Cincy, we moved away from that as a goal or metric. We say, ‘That is not our measure of your performance, but rather it’s how well you solve problems.’ ”

The agreement also established a Citizens Complaint Authority, a unit independent of the police department. The unit’s director is appointed by the city manager. The staff investigates the police department through local complaints. They have subpoena power. They make recommendations and findings within 90 days, which is before the police chief or the mayor decide on discipline.

The process isn’t without challenges.

The Citizens Complaint Authority have a case backlog that Roley and Gerhardstein are keeping a close eye on.

Even after the Cincinnati agreement ended, the groups continued to make changes. Following Taylor’s death, Cincinnati revised its policy on no-knock warrants, making it harder to enter a property without prior notification to confiscate drugs.

“Drugs can be seized at any time,”Roley said. “So we wanted to add additional provisions before that happened. We wantedtomakesurethatifyouaredoing a no-knock warrant, that it is in service to someone in need of help.

That is the beauty of the agreement is being able to build a relationship enough to say, ‘Hey, we need to look at this. Nothing happened in Cincinnati, but what happened in Louisville — that could happen in Cincinnati.’ ”

In the last 21 years, Roley estimates the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement has led to around 1,000 revisions of police policies.