Administration officials believe about 80,000 Afghans are eligible to come to the U.S. But the prospect of them coming has sparked a wave of preemptive criticism from certain quarters of conservative circles. Steve Cortes, a former Trump adviser, tweeted an image of a planeload of refugees leaving Afghanistan with the words, “Raise your hand if you want this plane landing in your town? America paid unimaginable costs in Afghanistan because of uniparty globalists who dominated the Bush & Obama administrations.” And FOX News host Tucker Carlson declared that “first we invade & then we’re invaded.”

“What I find is that a lot of Congress people or people like Trump think it’s useful to get their base riled up but it’s not really representative of what’s actually happening in the community,” said Jennifer Sime, senior vice president of resettlement, asylum and integration at the International Rescue Committee, working with Afghans. “The lower you go in terms of the communities, the more support you start seeing.Once you get to the level of a mayor, you start seeing a lot more support.”

The White House has acknowledged the politics of bringing refugees to the U.S. will be tricky. “We also know that there are some people in this country, even some in Congress, who may not want to have people from another country come as refugees to the United States. That’s a reality,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who dealt with similar backlash while serving in the State Department during the Obama administration. “We can’t stop or prevent that on our own … And we’re going to continue to convey clearly that this is … part of the fabric of the United States and not back away from that.”