As the United States withdraws troops from Afghanistan, thousands of Afghan citizens are fleeing their homeland and into countries around the world. Dan Stoecker, CEO of refugee agency The Alliance, said that the Houston area is preparing to welcome 70 Afghans by the end of August. Most Afghans coming into the country are Special Immigrant Visa holders, which means that they worked with the U.S. military.  

An analysis of other data related to refugees entering the U.S. shows there is a long history of Afghan resettlement in Houston. A total of 885 Afghan refugees arrived in Harris County between the years of 1975 and 2018, according to a dataset of U.S. refugee resettlements published late last year. These data are a combination of Office of Refugee Resettlement records and publicly available data obtained from the Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration after 2008.