Afghan children’s uncertain future
TEN-year-old Mansoor only narrowly escaped Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in August, and while he is now living safely in Washington state with relatives, he asks them every day if he can return.
In the chaos around the withdrawal of US troops and the evacuation of more than 70000 Afghans to the US, Mansoor was separated from his parents and siblings.
Mansoor was carrying his relative Shogofa’s toddler, as they entered the airport in Kabul. At that moment, shots rang out and the military closed the gates in between Mansoor and his parents. After three days in the airport, he boarded a plane with Shogofa, who hoped the rest of the family would make it out on a later flight.
Shogofa ended up on a US military base in New Jersey with her own two young children, Mansoor, and other relatives. After several weeks, they joined her sister, Nilofar, who lives in the Seattle area. Mansoor’s parents are currently in hiding in Afghanistan because of his father’s former position in the Afghan government.
Now, Mansoor mostly sits by himself and rarely plays with the other children, Nilofar said. The family requested only their first names be published to protect Mansoor’s parents and other relatives still in Afghanistan.
Mansoor is among approximately 1 300 children evacuated to the US from Afghanistan without their parents or legal guardians, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the care of unaccompanied minors. The figure has not been previously reported.
Many of the Afghan minors were unintentionally separated from their parents in Kabul, advocates said.
The complicated situations of the minors, coupled with language barriers and lack of culturally appropriate foster families for those who don’t have sponsors in the US, is creating a tangled knot of problems for the US government. Primary among them – no clear mechanism for reuniting children who are now in the US with parents still stuck abroad. The administration of US President Joe Biden is working on ways to expedite the entry of parents whose children are already in the US, according to two officials.
Without a fast track, parents abroad will likely be stuck in a long backlog of Afghans who are applying for US entry on humanitarian grounds.
Most of the children and adult evacuees have been allowed temporarily into the US, protecting them from deportation but not giving them permanent legal status. The children will likely have to find legal help to navigate the complex immigration system.
Since August, the government says it has received more than 26000 requests for temporary entry from Afghan nationals abroad. Fewer than 100 applications have been conditionally approved since July 1, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Afghans have to travel to a third country to even apply because the US embassy in Kabul is closed.
Mansoor’s parents have mostly avoided cellphones for fear of being tracked down by the new Islamist militant rulers, Nilofar said. On November 1, the boy spoke with his parents for the first time since he was separated from them in late August.
Most of the unaccompanied migrant children in US government shelters – more than 11 000 down from peaks of more than 22 000 earlier in the year – are from Central America. Unlike the Afghan children, minors from Central America have often intentionally set out on their own with the aim of reuniting with parents or other family already in the US.
HHS says its aim is to reunite migrant children with U.S. sponsors as quickly and safely as possible. More than 1 000 of the unaccompanied children from Afghanistan have been released, the bulk with relatives they were originally traveling with, like Mansoor, according to the HHS.
Typically, unaccompanied migrant children travelling with family members who are not parents or legal guardians are separated and placed in government care. But authorities made an exception to the rule in policy guidance issued in September that said Afghan children could be released to adults with proven “bona fide” relationships who had been screened by US officials.
As of this week, 266 unaccompanied Afghan children remain in government shelters and long-term foster care arrangements around the country, HHS said. Among them are dozens of children who have no relatives or family friends in the US who they can be released to. Their cases have been languishing in the system, said Ashley Huebner with non-profit National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, where many Afghan children are being sheltered.
“I think overall the lack of action here is quite shocking,” she said. Two months since the evacuation, “it should not be this difficult.”
Vanegas in Michigan said there are 126 children at the Starr Commonwealth Emergency Intake Site in the state and as of Tuesday, 27 of them had been there longer than 40 days.
Many potential foster families do not speak the children’s native language and are not familiarised with Afghan customs, advocates said.
Afghan American groups have found people in the community willing to take children in, but are hitting snags in a long and complicated state licensing process for foster families. A coalition of groups sent a letter to HHS recently, asking the agency to “expedite and demystify reunification and placement processes, such as foster care, sponsorship, and humanitarian parole,” among other recommendations to minimise the “displacement, uncertainty, loss and grief” the children are facing.
HHS said it is working with shelters to ensure facilities are culturally appropriate and is providing mental health care for traumatised children. At the same time, the agency said it is trying to place children according to the wishes of their parents abroad.