WHEREAS, The American evacuation efforts employed in Kabul, Afghanistan after the Taliban regained control of the city on August 15, 2021, have been reported by many news sources as chaotic; and

WHEREAS, On August 26, 2021, an attack on the evacuation operations left 13 American servicemembers and nearly 200 Afghans dead. The Islamic State in Khorasan, also known as ISIS-K, took responsibility for the attack; and

WHEREAS, On August 30, 2021, the federal government was unsure about the total number of Americans left behind, and United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken estimated, “We believe there are still a small number of Americans, under 200 and likely closer to 100, who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave;” and

WHEREAS, This crisis strikes close to home, as of September 1, 2021, at least 24 students who attend school in Sacramento’s San Juan school district, and at least one family from El Cajon, California, are still stranded in Afghanistan as the system for extraction broke down over the last few days of August; and

WHEREAS, Cajon Valley Superintendent David Miyashiro told news outlets that it is a “conservative estimate” to say that over 1,000 children that are United States citizens or children of Special Immigrant Visa holders are stranded in Afghanistan; and

WHEREAS, On August 30, 2021, General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr. noted that no American citizens made it out on the last five flights out of Kabul; and

WHEREAS, Over the course of the war, hundreds of thousands of Afghans put their safety at risk to help our servicemembers, working as interpreters, drivers, and informants, putting themselves and their families at risk of retribution from the Taliban; and

WHEREAS, After America’s military withdrawal on August 31, 2021, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted the Armed Forces of the United States throughout the war remain within Afghanistan’s borders, including an Afghan interpreter named Mohammed who helped rescue then-Senator Joseph R. Biden when he and two other Senators were stranded in a remote Afghanistan valley after their helicopter was forced to land in a snowstorm; and

WHEREAS, On August 16, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden stated, relating to the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, “The buck stops with me”; and

WHEREAS, The federal government failed to sufficiently plan to protect Americans and our allies; and

WHEREAS, Beginning on September 1, 2021, the Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, a Norwegian intelligence group, reported the Taliban have begun rounding up Afghans on a blacklist of people with suspected links to the previous Afghan administration. Reports also state that within hours of the United States’ withdrawal, Taliban fighters began raiding the homes of interpreters left behind in Kabul; now, therefore, be it