President Joe Biden has restarted flying thousands of Afghans to the United States, through the Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania, after flights had been halted due to a measles outbreak by Afghans on multiple U.S. military bases.
Afghans will now resume boarding international flights from overseas to land in the U.S. where they will be resettled as refugees across 46 states, the Associated Press confirmed. The flights will exclusively land in Philadelphia.
Biden’s massive resettlement operation currently has about 53,000 Afghans living on U.S. bases in Wisconsin, Texas, New Mexico, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia. The administration hopes to bring at least 95,000 Afghans to the U.S. in total over the next 12 months.
As part of the operation, Afghans are flown to Philadelphia International Airport and Dulles International Airport in Virginia before being taken to U.S. bases where they live temporarily while completing their vetting and immigration processing before getting resettled.