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By Matthew Marcellus and Mohammed Karaghool
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We both swore to support and defend the Constitution, nearly a decade apart. One of us, Matthew Marcellus, was born in this country and has never had to earn his place in it. The other, Mohammed Karaghool, got here after eight years serving alongside U.S. Special Forces in Iraq, three years in an Iraqi prison after the Americans left, and a two-and-a-half-year wait for his visa. Since January, the government has all but stopped issuing that kind of visa to the Afghans who did the same work. It should start again.
Karaghool was 17 and still in high school in Baghdad when he joined the Iraqi Special Operations Forces in 2005. Being a student let him keep a low profile. He led a reconnaissance team and translated for the U.S. Army's 5th and 10th Special Forces Groups on night raids. Once, he warned an American team not to point the soles of their boots at an elderly Iraqi officer, because in Iraq that is disrespectful.
The Americans left in 2011. The next year, an Iraqi judge gave Karaghool's name to Iranian-backed militias. In March 2013, officers aligned with the militias kidnapped him. When his father, his wife and an American Special Forces soldier began advocating for him, the officers turned the kidnapping into an espionage case, which Karaghool says they fabricated. He was held until May 2016. For the first 15 months, he was kept in an underground cage and saw no faces or daylight. He says he was tortured every night for the first three months. After 15 months, he was moved to a military jail, where a military court heard his case.
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In 2017, the year after Karaghool left prison, Marcellus took the oath of enlistment in Syracuse, New York. He was 28 and unhappy with his life, and he wanted to force a change. He had wanted to be a published writer since childhood, and by March 2018 the Army was publishing his work. A year later, Marcellus read a colleague's story about an Iraqi linguist who had become a U.S. Army staff sergeant. It never said how he got here. In six years of telling the Army's story, Marcellus never heard of the special visas for Iraqis and Afghans who worked for our government.
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Marcellus left the Army on January 11, 2023. At his farewell, he received mementos and awards. Meanwhile, Karaghool was still in Iraq, waiting on the visa he had applied for in April 2021. Right after his release in 2016, the judge who had previously given his name to Iranian-backed militias gave his name and address to an al-Qaida group.
In October 2023, Karaghool finally landed in Denver with his family and just his old photographs. He saw a big American flag in the terminal before his passport was stamped. His American supervisor’s wife met him at baggage claim, and the couple hosted him for two weeks.
Karaghool had wanted to join the U.S. Army since his years beside its Special Forces, and his supervisor wrote that into the visa application. He enlisted with his wife beside him at the oath, and this June he graduated as a combat engineer in the Utah Army National Guard. His drill sergeants refused to give him a trainee leadership job. He had already done it, they told him, and the young soldiers needed the chance. After lights-out, those young soldiers came to his bunk to ask what war is like.
Karaghool came here on a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) through the Iraqi translator and interpreter program. The United States operates a separate SIV program for Afghans who worked for or on behalf of the U.S. government. Many Afghans and Iraqis who did the same work for U.S. forces are still waiting for theirs. Since January 1, Presidential Proclamation 10998 has suspended visa issuance to Afghan nationals and removed the exemption that had covered Afghan SIVs in a preceding proclamation. The State Department issued 18,319 of those visas in fiscal year 2025, counting family members. From January through March, it issued three. As of January 31, more than 23,000 Afghans whose service the State Department had confirmed were still waiting, not counting their families. At the end of March, 5,978 visas remained.
The proclamation cites deficient screening and vetting information from the countries it covers. We both believe in rigorous vetting. The Iraqi charges against Karaghool still surface every time he applies for a job. The State Department issued his visa, and the Army later accepted his enlistment. A process meant to protect Americans should assess individuals on the evidence, not impose a blanket rule based on nationality.
The administration can restore the exemption for Afghan SIV applicants while maintaining individual security screening. Congress, which sets the number of visas, should authorize enough additional visas for applicants whose qualifying service has already been verified.
This Veterans Day is Karaghool’s first since he finished U.S. Army training. The young soldiers who came to his bunk swore the same oath he did. Some of them will deploy someday, and they will need someone like him to tell them where not to point their boots. He began keeping his half of the promise at 17. America signed its half at an airport in Denver, under a flag. We are asking it to finish signing for the men still waiting.
Mohammed Karaghool served eight years with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces alongside the U.S. Army's 5th and 10th Special Forces Groups and is a combat engineer in the Utah Army National Guard. He writes in a personal capacity; his views do not represent the U.S. Army or the Utah National Guard.
Matthew Marcellus served in Army public affairs from 2017 to 2023 and is director of communications at No One Left Behind, a nonprofit serving Afghan and Iraqi wartime allies, where Karaghool is a volunteer ambassador.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
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