At Kabul International Airport back in 2021, thousands of people rushed to flee the country. The Taliban had regained control of the government in Afghanistan and civilians who were trying to escape were getting killed in the airport. At the time, former President Joe Biden announced the acceleration of evacuations by the end of August 2021.
Among the people desperate to leave was a father of seven and his family. He’d been in the Afghan military and aided Americans during the Afghan War.
We’re not fully identifying the family because they’re afraid of facing deportation, but NEPM has verified the family’s documentation.
He had to make a choice
On the day the father and his family left Afghanistan, the airport was chaotic.
“When we got into the airport, there were flash bombs and gunshots going off. Smoke filled my eyes and I could barely see,” the father said in Pashto.
He could only manage to carry two of his children. His wife carried another. He told his two adolescent daughters to each carry one brother, one of whom was a toddler, and stay close behind.
“We didn’t have much time to decide what we should do,” he said.
The U.S. military evacuation plane was about to take off and in the frantic rush, he had to make a choice. One, he said, that devastates him to this day. He boarded the plane leaving Afghanistan without four of his children in order to save the rest of his family.
“It is a nightmare to think about,” he said. “It was stressful and crowded. I could only carry so many kids in my arms.”
His two adolescent daughters, who were blocked from boarding the plane, scrambled out of the airport with their younger brothers in tow. An American aide, who was in contact with the father, made sure the children got to their grandparents’ house outside of Kabul.
After a long flight into the U.S., the father, his wife and three boys landed in New Hampshire, where a resettlement agency helped the family.
After a year, he moved to Massachusetts and was granted asylum status in the U.S. under the Biden administration. At the same time, the father was desperate to reunite with the four children left behind in Afghanistan through the U.S. refugee admissions program.
After 3 years of careful planning and anxious waiting, the father got a notification this past January that his children had arrived at a field office that processes U.S. refugees in Qatar. Field workers were finalizing travel for the kids. They even had a date of arrival in the United States: January 24th.
But on January 22nd, an executive order President Donald Trump signed banning refugee resettlement and freezing foreign aid goes into effect. All new refugees planning to come into the U.S. get barred.
“Most of the people who come through the refugee resettlement program know someone here in the United States,” said Courtney Madsen, the northeast regional director for Church World Service, a national resettlement agency. “They're coming to join someone. They're coming to reunite with family.”
The father, desperate to see his children again, pleaded with lawyers working at the field office to find a solution. The mother said she ached with worry.
“When they were in Qatar, I was worrying about them. I was thinking that they were going to get left behind,” the mother said in Pashto.
A family reunited
A lawyer in Qatar submitted another form to U.S. immigration officials, a petition for refugees and asylum seekers. This form happened to get pushed through and was federally approved. Finally, two and a half months after they were supposed to arrive in the U.S, the children’s travel was approved.
A family member sent the children money to buy plane tickets. The kids arrived in the U.S. in March.
“When we met in the airport. We were very happy. We hugged each other, and my mom and my two sisters started crying of the excitement and we took a photo there,” said one of the brothers who escaped Afghanistan with his father back in 2021.
He’s 13-years-old. When this all happened, he was 9…and thought he might never see his siblings again.
“When we came back home, we were very happy. And we sat down and it was almost time to, like, break our fast. And we all broke it together,” the 13-year-old brother said.
It was the holy month of Ramadan when everyone was able to be together again. The youngest child of the family, a three-year-old boy born in the U.S., was eyeing chocolates scattered on the coffee table.
He jets into the kitchen with a mischievous smile and laughter fills the room. This family is so grateful to be together again, but their story is rare.
Federal courts have ordered the Trump administration to allow at least some refugees into the U.S. But, the White House hasn’t yet complied with that order.
NEPM reached out to the State Department for comment, has not responded to a request for comment.
Last month Trump enacted a travel ban on citizens from several countries including Afghanistan.
"Love thy neighbor"
Angela Bovill, the executive director of Ascentria Care Alliance, a Lutheran-based resettlement agency in Worcester, Massachusetts, said their spiritual practices call them to continue this work. She says the commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” is one they practice in resettlement work.
“Our call to “love thy neighbor” makes this current dynamic that we see in the United States so vexing, honestly,” Bovill said. “And because it's in between, particularly those of faith and what we're called to do and who we're called to be. This idea that some people are acceptable and some people are not, and some people are worthy and some people are not, are ideas that fundamentally need to be rejected.”
Meanwhile, the father of this family remains anxious. His family has applied for green cards, but he worries about Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has even swept up people who had legal status in the U.S.
It’s difficult to keep dread at bay, the father said, but he’s trying.
“It was really clear that we were living an uncompleted life before the boys came home, but now? Now, I feel complete,” the father said.
