Thousands of Americans remain stranded in the war-torn nation of Yemen after coronavirus restrictions closed the borders in mid-March, activists are now calling attention to the seriousness of the problem.
According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), thousands of Americans have been stranded in Yemen after borders and airports were closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, as The Hill reported on Friday.
Ahmed Mohamed, CAIR’s director of litigation, told Fox News on Friday that the organization received more than 500 requests for assistance from Americans trapped in Yemen, and that the State Department received more than 2,000.
The State Department scheduled two flights that took approximately 300 Americans home, on June 28 and July 1, but have not targeted the thousands of other Americans who are still trying to return home.
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“There are between 1,500 or more Americans who are still stranded in Yemen trying to find a way back to the United States and cannot, and are not currently receiving any help from their government,” Mohamed told Fox News.
“It is disturbing that our government has not done more for its citizens who are trapped in a foreign country that is in the midst of a civil war, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Yemen is “the world’s largest humanitarian crisis” and that “four out of five people in Yemen need help saving lives.”
“The situation in Yemen is catastrophic,” UN emergency aid coordinator Mark Lowcock said in a statement. “This is what more than five years of war have done to Yemen. The health system is in a state of collapse, “said Lowcock, adding that the coronavirus is spreading at a much higher rate than any other country.
Mohamed says the State Department must address why for three months they made no effort to evacuate Americans from Yemen as they did in “dozens and dozens, if not in a hundred different countries around the world.”
“It appears that the State Department sat on their hands for three months, hoping that no one would discover that these Americans were stranded,” Mohamed told Fox News.
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They have never been able to receive a “proper response” as to why more Americans have been unable to return to the United States, simply saying that they do not have adequate resources in Yemen when the United States Embassy closed in 2015, at the start of the civil war.
As a result, “easily dozens” of Americans have been stranded in Yemen for months, and in many cases, people need assistance at the consulate for a variety of reasons, such as Miriam Alghazali, an American, born and raised in New York, which has been stranded in Yemen and was unable to return to the United States to give birth.
Alghazali traveled with her husband and three children in August 2019 to visit her mother-in-law in Yemen, who was terminally ill. In December, her mother-in-law passed away and her husband, Izdehar Alghazali, returned to the US with one of her children to secure an apartment, while Miriam, who had become pregnant, kept her other two children.
The day the Alghazali family was due to fly home, Yemen closed its borders, Mohamed told Fox News.
The State Department did not respond to his requests to leave Yemen.
Alghazali gave birth in early June, six weeks ahead of time, after “gunshots and rocket fire” were heard above the apartment where she and her two children were staying.
The Alghazali family was unable to board the two scheduled flights that left Yemen in late June and early July because the baby did not have a passport and was therefore not allowed to fly, Mohamed told Fox News.
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The State Department reportedly told the family and CAIR representatives that they will now have to go to a neighboring country to visit a US consulate and retrieve a passport for their baby, in order to return to the USA
“Keep in mind that the whole problem with Yemen is that there is no way out of Yemen,” said Mohamed.
CAIR continues to advocate for the return of the Alghazali family to the United States, along with thousands of other Americans.
“The United States is the world superpower,” said Mohamed. “If the United States cannot assure its citizens, then that really speaks to the priorities of the United States, the priorities of this government.”
The State Department could not be contacted to answer questions about the situation in Yemen.
