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LEFT BEHIND BY HISTORY:
An Afghan family’s search for sanctuary in a world of walls
PEOPLE in San Diego wave across the border structure to others in Tijuana, Mexico, November 23, 2018. AP/RODRIGO ABD
By Megan Janetsky
A
The Associated Press
S they walked up to the thick metal pillars of the border wall dividing Tijuana and San Diego, the Hussaini siblings carried nothing from their lives in Afghanistan than a hazy fantasy of what awaited them on the other side. Amir, 21, and his sisters, Suraiya, 26, and Bano, 27, arrived in northern Mexico with an appointment for January 24, four days after US President Donald Trump took office. That was the day they were supposed to enter the US and make their case, marking what they thought would be an end to the repression by the Taliban after the withdrawal of American troops in 2021, and to their 17,500-mile journey by foot, canoe, bus and plane across the world. That was all before the door to asylum slammed shut along the US southern border moments after Trump took office. Trump’s victory was based in no small part on support from voters who embraced his hard-line immigration views. Within days, his administration had transformed what it meant to seek refuge in the US, casting aside an ethos of helping the persecuted that is nearly as old as the country itself. Families such as the Hussainis are suffering the cascading consequences of larger political shifts as countries tighten asylum policies
and turn away refugees. In Afghanistan, whose tumultuous history is intertwined with American military and foreign policy, the expulsion carried an added sting because the Hussainis believed they would find safe harbor in the US. Instead, Amir watched his sisters being torn away from him by American border agents under the harsh fluorescent lights of a detention facility. It was the last time he saw them. Half a year later, the family has been dispersed to different countries as part of the administration’s push to send immigrants and refugees to far-flung, unfamiliar and often dangerous places. One sister is trying to navigate life in the far reaches of South America. The second is marooned in Central America. Amir is back in Afghanistan, plagued by fear in the very country the family fled. “We had reached the end of our journey…and our hopes were completely shattered,” Suraiya said. “I can’t necessarily call it a betrayal, but the fact that they didn’t interview us, ask about our fears or why
ASYLUM seekers embrace upon arriving in Panama City, March 8, 2025. AP/MATIAS DELACROIX
we fled our country. It all seemed very cruel.”
Watching a future in Afghanistan dissolve
FOR most of their lives, even as their homeland was riven by war, Suraiya and her siblings never dreamed of leaving. But as the years rolled on, they watched the life they were building dissolve. That was when they turned to the US, which once funneled hundreds of billions of dollars in humanitarian and military aid into Afghanistan, as the place that could offer them a new life. The Hussainis grew up in an area run by local gangs on the fringes of Kabul, the capital, after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Their father was a metalworker. Their mother could not attend school but wanted everything for her children. After centuries of targeted
massacres and persecution, the Hussainis’ ethnic minority group, the Hazaras, felt a respite with the Taliban out of power. For women, the doors to education and work finally were opened. “I never thought I would go to America. I hadn’t even seen American soldiers up close until they left and the Taliban came back” four years ago, Suraiya said. “My family was in Afghanistan. I just wanted to be here doing the things my parents were never able to do.” Amir, an aspiring musician with thick, curly black hair and an optimistic smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes, would spend weekends working as a wedding DJ. Suraiya, his more reserved older sister, studied computer science in a public university sitting side by side with men. Suraiya dreamed of a career, but that changed in her third semester in college in 2021, when
the Taliban-led government resumed a yearslong effort to systematically exclude women from much of society. Taliban officials came to her classes and told women they were no longer allowed to attend school alongside men. She was transferred to a Taliban-run school, where women were only allowed to study dentistry. Ultimately, women were banned from higher education. For Amir, work evaporated when the Taliban prohibited most forms of music, which they said was against the teachings of Islam. In 2023, authorities announced that religious police would scour wedding halls in Kabul to enforce the ban. In 2024, they announced they had “seized and destroyed” over 21,000 instruments. “The Taliban told me I had to quit my job a number of times. But if I gave it up, I would have lost everything—my work, my livelihood, my entire way of life,” Amir said. Under the new government, some of Afghanistan’s millions of Hazaras have been killed in raids and attacks as part of a campaign of violence and discrimination. Suraiya became increasingly scared to go outside. The home she shared with her parents and five siblings felt more like a prison. “We were considered nothing just because we were Hazaras,” she said. The Hussainis felt they had no choice but to leave. The Taliban government did not respond to a request for comment about criticisms of humanrights concerns about their treatment of Hazaras and women under its rule.
Crossing continents
TO finance their journey to the US, the three siblings sold everything they owned in 2023, including a family home. Along with Bano and her husband, the siblings traveled to neighboring Iran, where they spent a year applying for a humanitarian visa to Brazil. While they waited, Bano gave birth to her first daughter. In Iran, the family and the baby lived in a ramshackle home in Tehran, eluding detection to avoid being swept up in deportations by Iran’s government. In spring of 2024, their spirits lifted when they boarded a flight to Brazil with new humanitarian visas. A world of possibilities seemed to await. The airport in São Paulo is the starting point for many migrants traveling to reach the US. In a span of months, the Hussaini family crossed 11 countries, winding their way north by bus through the highaltitude deserts of Bolivia and the dense forests of the Andes. Suraiya carried a hair clip her mother had given her and a few totems from friends. Then, in Ecuador, those small pieces of her former life were stolen. The siblings joined more than a million people who crossed the Darien Gap between 2022 and 2024. Controlled by criminal gangs, the perilous stretch of jungle dividing Colombia and Panama has turned into a migratory highway for those fleeing economic crisis, repression and war. Suraiya remembers the pouring rain and the crying of her sister’s baby as they trudged through the rainforest. By the time they Continued on A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 58.6080 n JAPAN 0.3842 n UK 78.1303 n HK 7.5413 n CHINA 8.2274 n SINGAPORE 45.1456 n AUSTRALIA 38.1538 n EU 68.0849 n KOREA 0.0408 n SAUDI ARABIA 15.6279 Source: BSP (October 24, 2025)