American citizens will reportedly not be prioritized by President Joe Biden in the evacuations from Afghanistan.
Afghans applying for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) will be taken in the order they are evacuated, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told Fox News' Jacqui Heinrich.
"Once we get more airlift out of Kabul, we're going to put as many people on those planes as we can," Kirby said. "There will be a mix not just American citizens, but perhaps some Afghan SIV applicants as well. We're going to focus on getting people out of the country, then sorting it out at the next stop.
"It's not going to be just Americans first, then SIV applicants."
The report comes after a joint statement Sunday from the State Department and the Defense Department on the operations to secure the airport and expedite the evacuation process.
"Over the next 48 hours, we will have expanded our security presence to nearly 6,000 troops, with a mission focused solely on facilitating these efforts and will be taking over air traffic control," the statement read. "[Monday] and over the coming days, we will be transferring out of the country thousands of American citizens who have been resident in Afghanistan, as well as locally employed staff of the U.S. mission in Kabul and their families and other particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals.
"And we will accelerate the evacuation of thousands of Afghans eligible for U.S. Special Immigrant Visas, nearly 2,000 of whom have already arrived in the United States over the past two weeks.
"For all categories, Afghans who have cleared security screening will continue to be transferred directly to the United States. And we will find additional locations for those yet to be screened."
There are reportedly thousands of Americans remaining in Afghanistan as of Sunday.
The Afghan refugees are reportedly going to be housed on U.S. military bases in Wisconsin and Texas, Heinrich tweeted Sunday night.
"Pentagon confirms to me the Department of Defense is preparing to house thousands of Afghan refugees on American military installations, immediately including Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and Fort Bliss in Texas," she reported.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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