US ‘Working to Locate’ 24 California Students, 16 Parents Trapped in Afghanistan
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United States officials are searching for more than three dozen California students and parents who have been unable to escape from Afghanistan.
The group includes 24 students and 16 parents from the Cajon Valley Union School District east of San Diego. Cajon Valley Superintendent David Miyashiro told school board members on Tuesday that he and other staff had met with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) about the issue, according to a Tuesday report in the Los Angeles Times, and that “government officials are working to locate the children and their families.”
The district said the students went to the country to visit relatives on special visas for U.S. military service, and that the trip was not school-sanctioned.
“We have a long summer break, and nobody knew the extent of what was going to happen, nobody knew what was coming,” Mike Serban, the district’s director of Family And Community Engagement (FACE), told The San Diego Union Tribune. “Their extended family is in Afghanistan, and they wanted to see their family. They went back, likely before the troops left, so they could say hello or goodbye one more time. What wouldn’t you do to go see your family one more time, let alone know you have only a window of time to go see them?”
“The families go out there for summer break,” Fraidoon Hasehmi, an Afghan immigrant and community liaison for the school district, told the publication. “The only reason they’re there is to see their families. If you watch the news you see the airports are really crowded, even for people with passports. It’s hard to get to the gates. We are trying to help as much as possible, trying to reach them, trying to contact them.”
The students range in age from preschool to high school. The school year began August 17, two days after the nation’s capital of Kabul fell to the Taliban. The U.S. military is scheduled to hand Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport over to the Taliban on Tuesday.
