Rubio Says 1,100 Afghan Allies Stranded at Qatar's Camp As Sayliyah

More than 1,100 vetted Afghan allies remain held at Camp As Sayliyah, the former US Army base outside Doha, with no clear way out, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged on Tuesday under questioning from a senior senator.

The figure surfaced during Rubio's June 2 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his first testimony since the United States went to war with Iran. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware pressed the Secretary on the group, which he said includes 400 children and 150 family members of active-duty US service members. They have been stranded at the Qatari camp for roughly a year and a half.

"There is talk of sending them either back to Afghanistan, into the waiting arms of the Taliban, or into war-torn... countries like the DRC," Coons told the hearing, asking Rubio to commit to relocating the vetted Afghans to the United States.

"We can't admit any Afghans"

Rubio said he could not. "We're under an executive order now after the National Guard attack here that happened last year. So we can't admit any Afghans at this point into the country," he told the committee. That order followed the November 2025 shooting of two National Guard members by an Afghan national near the White House, after which the Trump administration suspended Afghan refugee and visa processing.

A third country, or none

The Secretary said Washington is instead searching for a third country. "We've talked to multiple countries about taking several hundred of these people and allowing them to move to a safe location," Rubio said, while conceding that "I don't know of any single country that's going to take 1,000 people." Advocacy groups have warned that the alternatives under discussion, repatriation to Taliban-run Afghanistan or transfer to the Democratic Republic of Congo, would put interpreters and their families at risk.

Camp As Sayliyah, long a logistics hub for US forces in the Gulf, became a transit point for Afghans evacuated after the 2021 withdrawal. Its population was meant to be temporary. A closure deadline earlier this year sharpened the urgency, leaving Qatar hosting a caseload that Washington has been unable to resolve.

Rubio cast the limits as policy set above his department, pointing to immigration restrictions imposed over the past year. "I'll work with you to find the right places for them to go. We want that to happen," he told Coons.

A file Doha cannot close

For Doha, the standoff keeps an awkward file open. A Gulf state that has positioned itself as an indispensable US partner and regional mediator is left holding more than a thousand people its ally will not take in.