WASHINGTON—Mahsa Zahrabi, an Afghan teenager who was evacuated to the U.S. on her own after being separated from her family at Kabul airport last year, was sleeping on the floor in her aunt’s unfinished basement in Virginia when a healthcare worker visited the home.
The healthcare worker, who had been called to check on the girl after Mahsa went to a local hospital with a panic attack, was alarmed by her living conditions. The healthcare worker tapped into her network of churches and volunteers and found her a foster family instead.
“I never told anyone because I didn’t care. I came here, that’s the biggest thing that happened in my life. I can go to school. I can go out. That’s all we want. Freedom,” said Mahsa, who was 16 years old when evacuated in August 2021.
Mahsa is one of the more than 1,550 Afghan children who came to the U.S. without either parent, after being separated from them in the chaos at Kabul airport during evacuation flights more than a year ago. The majority have been placed with a family member or friend, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, leaving fewer than 100 in government care.
Mahsa Zahrabi, who fled Afghanistan last year, holds a scarf she was given at a Chicago shelter.
The government stops monitoring unaccompanied children soon after their release to a guardian. The Biden administration says that any family separated at the Kabul airport is eligible for a seat on a very limited number of evacuation flights out of Afghanistan, but families and their legal advocates have received conflicting guidance about the process and said it hasn’t yet activated a planned online database to streamline the process.
“The online family reunification portal will come online in the near future,” the State Department said, declining to provide a date. “In the meantime, resettlement agencies have their own processes to send these family reunification cases to [us].”
The State Department declined to answer questions about the cases described in this article, citing privacy considerations. It didn’t answer questions about how it prioritizes who to evacuate or how…
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