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🇺🇸🗽MAINELY HELPFUL: Maine Immigration Attorneys, Communities Reach Out To Afghan Refugees, Even As Evacuation Ends With Far Too Many Left Behind! — Our Obligation To Help Refugees Does Not End With The Last Troop Departure!
Masuma Sayed, a member of Maine’s Afghan-American community, is struggling to help family members flee Afghanistan before Aug. 31. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
A trio of parakeets fills Masuma Sayed’s home in Portland with soft tweets as she recalls her recent visit to Afghanistan.
She returned to her native city of Kandahar in May, her first trip back in 28 years. She visited her mother’s grave, where as a teenager she would release birds that she bought in a shop on the way to the cemetery. Her mother loved birds, and so does she.
Sayed, 43, did not release birds when she was at her mother’s grave in May. Her heart was heavy, burdened by the memory of the evening that Taliban members burst into her family’s home and killed her mother and older sister, leaving behind their bullet-riddled bodies. Her sister was targeted because she was about to marry a soldier in the ruling government.
Her mother’s last words were whispered pleas to cover her sister’s face and bring her a cup of water.
Through the years, Sayed has lost 10 family members at the hands of the Taliban, including a brother-in-law and his brother, who were killed in June because they worked as contractors with U.S. forces. She’s trying to save more than 20 family members from a similar fate.
“Now I am the voice of my family,” Sayed said. “They cannot speak for themselves.”
Sayed is among a small but committed group of Afghan Americans, immigration lawyers and other Mainers who are anxiously trying to help evacuate people from Afghanistan by Tuesday’s deadline. There are about 50 to 70 Afghan families in Maine, or about 500 people, some of whom came here after helping U.S.-led forces oust the Taliban from power in 2001.
It’s a frustrating, confusing and rapidly changing situation that has called for extraordinary collaboration and sharing information across the country and the globe. Social service agencies and church groups in Maine are pitching in, doing what they can to provide assistance from 6,500 miles away.
“We know there is a huge humanitarian crisis going on and a lot of people in need,” said Sally Cloutier, chief operating officer at The Opportunity Alliance, a social service agency in Portland.
The Opportunity Alliance hosted a Zoom meeting last Thursday with Afghan Americans and other Mainers who are desperately trying to assist in the evacuation. Cloutier and her staff offered to support Afghan families in their efforts and pledged to hold a follow-up meeting this week to learn what more can be done.
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Jennifer Atkinson, Esquire Damariscotta, ME PHOTO: Law firm
“This is a rapidly evolving and extremely fluid situation,” said Jennifer Atkinson, an immigration lawyer in Damariscotta who is helping a Portland family that is trying to get loved ones out of Afghanistan.
“We’re certainly learning every day, every hour,” said Philip Mantis, legal director at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project in Portland.Without necessary paperwork, financial resources and commercial flights, getting out of Afghanistan is extremely difficult and dangerous, the lawyers explained.
Atkinson, who is helping her Portland clients pro bono, said she was discussing various options with them, including how their family members might “go to ground” and stay safe while in hiding. Trying to get out through Pakistan or other border crossings would be extremely “dicey,” Atkinson said.
One Afghan woman spoke tearfully during the meeting through an interpreter. She said her husband and son were waiting at Kabul’s airport, and that a nephew had been seriously injured but was unable to get medical care amid the chaos.
Immediately after the meeting, Atkinson put the woman in touch with an organization that is connecting Afghans who need medical care with doctors and nurses who are still in Afghanistan and willing to help. As of Friday, the boy was on his way to a hospital. Further information was unavailable.
“People are coming out of the woodwork to help,” Atkinson said. “We’re all trying to do everything we can to get people out.”
Atkinson said an email network has developed, including immigration lawyers and others across the United States and beyond, who are trying to expedite evacuations. All are searching for clear, verifiable information on how to get documentation and secure a safe flight out of the region.
“We’re getting information second or third hand, so we’re never sure exactly what’s going on,” Atkinson said. “Many of us are acting as travel agents as well as attorneys.”
Margaret Stock, Esquire Anchorage, Alaska PHOTO: Law firm
One person providing clarity and straight answers on that email network is Margaret Stock, an immigration and citizenship attorney in Anchorage, Alaska. She’s also a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a top expert in noncombatant evacuation operations like the one that’s been happening in Afghanistan.
Stock said the U.S. government has spent million of dollars developing strategies and training personnel to properly plan and execute evacuations of U.S. citizens and allies when ending a military action or withdrawing from a threatened area. The Department of Defense published a 200-page manual on how to do it in 2010 and updated it in 2015.
“They don’t seem to be following the manual,” Stock said Thursday in a phone interview.
Stock said the manual calls for various government branches and nongovernmental organizations to form a planning task force as soon as an evacuation date is known. The Trump administration negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set May 1, 2021, as the final withdrawal date.
Stock said she helped the Department of Homeland Security organize the first task force-type planning meeting for the Afghanistan operation, which was held last Wednesday. The Department of Defense wasn’t included, she said.
“They should have had that meeting a long time ago,” Stock said. “I was asking them to have it back in February. The minute (former President Trump) said we were going to pull out, they should have started planning.”
Some aspects of the evacuation seem to have gone relatively well so far, Stock said, such as the actual military airlifts out of Kabul. But the United States shouldn’t have given up Bagram Air Base, which would have been a more secure airlift center than Kabul’s airport, she said. And it should have developed a comprehensive roster of everyone who needed to be evacuated and how best to get them out.
Stock also questioned why U.S. citizens were allowed to travel to Afghanistan as the evacuation date neared, including a group of exchange students. And she noted the lack of planning for special circumstances, such as young children who might lack necessary passports. Last week, an Afghan woman was turned away at the airport because her baby, a U.S. citizen by her American husband, didn’t have a passport, Stock said.
“There’s a lot of fear right now,” Stock said. “People are facing a terrible decision to sit tight and hope things get better, or try to get to the airport and hope to get out.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
Maine has been welcoming to refugees from all countries. And, with good reason! The Maine economy is heavily dependent on the skills of refugees and other migrants.
While our military is out, the human trauma is still unfolding. The refugee flow is likely to continue long after the fall of Afghanistan, just as it did with with Vietnam, at the time I started my Government service at the Legacy INS. The inadequacy of the procedures then in effect led to the Refugee Act of 1980.
Our current effort is hampered by the illegal and immoral destruction of the refugee admission program by Trump nativists. But, the Biden Administration has been dilatory in restoring functionality, and has disturbingly failed to maximize the use of all available tools and avenues for refugee admissions under the Refugee Act of 1980.
Spojmie Nasiri, Esquire San Francisco, CA PHOTO: Law firmQ!
Spojmie Nasiri, an Afghan American immigration attorney in the Bay Area, said several of her clients are stuck in Kabul and more resources are needed to assist those arriving in the U.S.
“You don’t get people out in 11 days,” she said. “We’re going to see the catastrophe of this for decades to come.”
