The United States is preparing to accommodate thousands of Afghan refugees in the coming days on American military installations while evacuating Americans from the country now controlled by the Taliban terrorist group.

“We want to have the capacity to get up to several thousand immediately, and want to be prepared for the potential of tens of thousands,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told Fox News on Sunday. “[Forts] Bliss and McCoy have the capability right now—and what’s advantageous is with a little bit of work, they could increase their capacity in very short order.”

Fort Bliss is a military base in El Paso, Texas, and Fort McCoy is in Monroe, Wisconsin.

Kirby also said that American citizens would not prioritize Afghan Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) applicants.

“Once we get more airlift out of Kabul, we’re going to put as many people on those planes as we can. There will be a mix, not just American citizens, but perhaps some Afghan SIV applicants as well,” Kirby said. “It’s not going to be just Americans first, then SIV applicants. We’re going to focus on getting as many folks out as we can.”

Documents obtained by Fox News show the Department of Defense planned to relocate up to 30,000 Afghan SIV applicants into the United States in the immediate future. The State Department will determine who is sent forward, while the Department of Defense will find facilities.

Neither department immediately responded to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.

In a joint statement issued Sunday, the two departments asserted they would work together to evacuate Americans and Afghan refugees to the United States in the coming days.

“Tomorrow and over the coming days, we will be transferring out of the country thousands of American citizens who have been resident in Afghanistan, as well as locally employed staff of the U.S. mission in Kabul and their families and other particularly vulnerable Afghan nationals,” the statement reads.

“And we will accelerate the evacuation of thousands of Afghans eligible for U.S. Special Immigrant Visas, nearly 2,000 of whom have already arrived in the United States over the past two weeks. For all categories, Afghans who have cleared security screening will continue to be transferred directly to the United States. And we will find additional locations for those yet to be screened.”

Epoch Times Photo
Afghan people sit as they wait to leave the Kabul airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)

The statement also pointed out that nearly 6,000 troops would be deployed to take over air traffic control and facilitate the evacuation in the next 48 hours.

World leaders expressed shock and dismay after the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, so swiftly. Republicans and some Democrats have harshly criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan so quickly.

Biden is not expected to give a speech on Afghanistan until Monday afternoon when he arrives in Washington from Camp David.