An economic crisis has spiraled in the country. More than half the population relies on humanitarian assistance
\n MEXICO
\nTheir journey starts with a humanitarian visa for Brazil: one of the few remaining exit routes for Afghans fleeing Taliban rule.
\nIt ends, after a perilous trek overland through Latin America across at least 11 countries, with scaling the border wall and jumping onto U.S. soil.
\nMore than a year after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, the number of Afghans crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum in the United States has soared.
\nHundreds of people each month are risking their lives to get there on a human smuggling route notorious for kidnapping, robbery and assault.
\nU.S. border agents apprehended 2,132 Afghans last year \u2013 a close to 30-fold increase over the prior year \u2013 with nearly half arriving in November and December, U.S. government data show.
\nReuters spoke to a dozen Afghans who braved the journey. Eleven said they made it to the United States; Reuters has not been able to confirm the whereabouts of one person a reporter interviewed in Mexico. All said they were unable to start new lives in Brazil and instead headed north by land to the United States.
\nSeveral refugee advocates and former U.S. officials said the increasing number of Afghans attempting the route reflected a failure both to address the humanitarian crisis inside Afghanistan and to provide adequate support for those who leave.
\nThe United States has been slow to process visas, they say, and together with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)should be doing more to help other countries to assist Afghan refugees.
\n\u201cJust getting out of the country is hard. And then if you do, it doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019ve reached safety,\u201d said Anne Richard, who served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration from 2012 to 2017.
\nThe State Department said in response to Reuters questions that it has tried to speed up visa processing for \u201cthe brave \u202fAfghans who stood side-by-side with the United States\u202fover\u202fthe past two decades\u201d and that it has offered support to governments to avoid \u201cirregular migration.\u201d It declined to comment on individual cases.
\nUNHCR said the humanitarian Brazilian visa program, which offers two-years residency and the right to work, study and apply for refugee status, is \u201can extremely important contribution\u201d but said shelters in the country are \u201coverwhelmed.\u201d
\nThe Brazilian government did not respond to requests for comment.
\nAbout 4,000 Afghans have entered Brazil on humanitarian visas since the program began in Sept. 2021, the U.S. State Department said, with a significant uptick in the final months of 2022.
\nLast year, 2,200 Afghans crossed through the lawless jungle region between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap \u2013 the only land route from South America toward the U.S. border \u2013 with nearly half crossing in November and December. In all of 2021, just 24 Afghans crossed, according to Panamanian government data.
\nThe Taliban administration\u2019s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about the escalating exodus. In recent weeks, Taliban spokesmen have said that Afghanistan is the \u201chome of all Afghans\u201d and that those who have left can come back.
\nReuters focused on four journeys by Afghan migrants who reached the United States, corroborating key details of their accounts with emails, official documents, interviews with relatives and co-workers as well as videos, photos and voice memos sent during their travels.
\nHere are their stories.
\nNine days in Sao Paulo airport
\nWhen 25-year-old Ilyas Osmani landed in Sao Paulo on Oct. 2 after more than 30 hours in transit from Tehran, he said he told an official at passport control that he was a refugee and asked for assistance.
\nThe official simply shrugged, Osmani said, and told him he was free to go.
\nAn activist who had spoken about women\u2019s rights several times on Afghan television, Osmani said he feared he was at risk under the Taliban because of his advocacy and his work as a general manager for a logistics company that was a subcontractor for U.S. armed forces.
\nAt baggage claim, he called an Afghan acquaintance who told him to head to Terminal 2, where he could find other Afghans.
\nOnce there, he said, he put his name on a waiting list for shelter spots.
\nThat first night on the cold tile floor of the airport, Osmani said he barely slept.
\nFrom a Tajik family in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Osmani said he had felt lucky when he won a U.S. immigration lottery in 2020 allowing him to apply for a \u201cdiversity\u201d visa, designed for nationals of countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.
\nBut precautions during the COVID pandemic delayed visa processing, and the U.S. embassy in Kabul closed when the city fell to the Taliban in August 2021.
\nNext, Osmani contacted three additional U.S. embassies to request a visa interview.
\nThe Islamabad embassy said it had reached processing capacity, acknowledging in a Nov. 2021 email to him \u201cthat it is currently very difficult for Afghans to obtain a visa to a third country\u201d and that \u201cmany at risk are facing significant challenges fleeing to safety.\u201d
\nThe embassy in Doha said it was only conducting interviews for Qatari citizens and residents while the embassy in Tashkent said it was unable to process Osmani\u2019s case but provided no reason, according to emails reviewed by Reuters.
\nAround the same time, Osmani also applied for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), a category for foreign nationals who worked with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, based on his work with the U.S. contractor, according to documents he shared. The application is still pending.
\nAbout 90,000 Afghans are awaiting decisions on their SIVs, according to Congressional reports from fall 2022.
\nThe State Department told Reuters it has \u201csurged resources\u201d to the SIV program and reviewed \u201cevery stage of the cumbersome\u202fmultiple step\u202fapplication process to streamline wherever possible.\u201d
\nOsmani fled. In Afghanistan, \u201cno one is safe who was fighting for gender equality,\u201d he said.
\nThe Taliban says its administration respects women\u2019s rights in line with its interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture.
\nWith no immediate path to the United States, Osmani applied for a humanitarian visa to Brazil at the end of 2021, he said, hoping to live in a big city where he\u2019d find a job that would allow him to support his parents back home.
\nAfter about a week at the airport, still without a shelter spot, Osmani and two other Afghan men went out to see Sao Paulo. On the way back, they were robbed at knifepoint, he said. Reuters was unable to independently confirm details of the attack.
\nOsmani called his father. \u201cI can\u2019t stay here,\u201d he said he told him.
\nOsmani\u2019s father put him in touch with his former boss at the Afghan Ministry of Transport, Murtaza Ziwari. Murtaza and his wife, Humaira, were preparing to head to the U.S. with their children.
\nThe Ziwari family had arrived in Brazil on June 29 on humanitarian visas, passport stamps viewed by Reuters showed. On Oct 12, they set out for Rio Branco, a remote city on the border with Peru, where Osmani joined them.
\nOVERLAND ACROSS A CONTINENT
\nBy the time she found herself trying to comfort three vomiting and exhausted young sons on a four-day bus journey across Peru, Humaira Ziwari had spent months struggling with the trauma of leaving home.
\n\u201cMy mental state was not good,\u201d she said.
\nIn Iran, where the family said they spent eight months waiting for their Brazilian visas, Humaira had been distraught, weeping over photos of weddings and family gatherings on her phone.
\nA 31-year-old homemaker, Humaira said she had never imagined a life outside Afghanistan. Murtaza, working in Herat province according to identification documents shared with Reuters, said he feared his job \u2013 which included overseeing civilian fuel distribution to gas stations and to U.S.-aligned military forces \u2013 would make him a target.
\nArmed men had shown up at Murtaza\u2019s family home in Mazar-i-Sharif asking for him the day after the Taliban took the city in August 2021, according to home security camera footage shared with Reuters.
\nThe Taliban did not respond to requests for comment on allegations of retaliation against former Afghan government officials. They announced a general amnesty shortly after taking over and have pledged to investigate individual cases.
\nThe Ziwaris fled to Iran overland, carrying one change of clothes and some money from selling Humaira\u2019s jewelry.
\nIn Sao Paulo, they bounced from the airport floor to a church stockroom to a drafty NGO event space for months. Murtaza couldn\u2019t find work. The kids suffered constant colds.
\nSo in mid-October, Murtaza said, they took a bus to Rio Branco, before making their way by foot, bus and taxi through Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
\nAt the Ecuador-Colombia border they said they paid $80 to a smuggler to be shepherded across, only to have him drop them off at the Colombian check point where officials wanted to send them back to Ecuador.
\n\u201cThe police were pulling us in one direction. The kids were screaming,\u201d Humaira said. Somehow the family managed to break away from the border guards and run.
\nColombia\u2019s migration authority did not respond to questions about the incident or about the treatment of Afghan migrants crossing through Colombia.
\nSoon the Ziwaris would be on the brink of a more terrifying leg of the journey: the no-man\u2019s-land between Colombia and Panama.
\nTREKKING PREGNANT THROUGH A JUNGLE
\nNahida Nabizada had heard about the Darien Gap, a dense, lawless jungle that can only be traversed by foot. She didn\u2019t want to go.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old was nearly two months pregnant, her second pregnancy after miscarrying at five months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to lose this child too,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She thought: \u2018What will happen if I start bleeding? There are no doctors; my parents aren\u2019t there; there\u2019s not enough food. If I am too slow, no one will wait for me.\u2019<\/p>\n
A university graduate with a computer science degree, Nahida felt unsafe when the Taliban took over.<\/p>\n
An economic crisis has spiraled in the country. More than half the population relies on humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n
Nahida and her husband Jamshid decided in late 2021 to leave.<\/p>\n
While about 88,500 Afghans have been resettled in the United States since the U.S. troop withdrawal, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), thousands more have applied to leave the country.<\/p>\n
From 51,000 applications to enter the United States on an emergency basis following the Taliban takeover, only around 600 Afghans have been approved, DHS said.<\/p>\n
After reaching Brazil in mid-2022, Nahida realized she was pregnant again. Staying behind while her husband tried to reach the U.S. by himself could have meant years of separation.<\/p>\n
So, in late 2022 they headed into the Darien where, Nahida said, \u201cevery step was filled with danger.\u201d She fell multiple times as they walked from daybreak to dusk, slipping on steep muddy paths and once falling in a river.<\/p>\n
The local guide they hired for $150 left them on the first day, midway through a 12-hour trek, Jamshid said.<\/p>\n
On the third night, a river overflowed and washed away their food, flashlight, sleeping mats and other belongings. Nahida said they survived on biscuits and dates, drinking river water.<\/p>\n
A few days later, thieves armed with knives stole $200 in cash from Jamshid, he said.<\/p>\n
When they emerged from the jungle, they were met by Panamanian soldiers who took them to a migrant camp. Soldiers routinely escort migrants to encampments to give them food, water and clothes and collect identifying information.<\/p>\n
In response to Reuters questions, the government said: \u201cPanama is the only country that provides care to all migrants who enter the country through Darien, so that they continue on their way to North America.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a short stay in the camp, the Nabizadas took a bus to Costa Rica on their way north through Central America towards Mexico.<\/p>\n
ON THE RUN FROM POLICE IN MEXICO<\/p>\n
When Fazal Khalili, 25, climbed out of a smuggler\u2019s boat on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico in October 2022, he had been at sea for more than 12 hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a lot of water inside our boat,\u201d said Khalili, who said he boarded the vessel near the border with Guatemala along with eight family members \u2013 including his 87-year-old grandmother and 9-year-old-cousin \u2013 and more than a dozen migrants from other countries.<\/p>\n
From the boat, the migrants headed to a sprawling migrant camp in the southern state of Oaxaca, where they slept in tents amid heavy rains, waiting for Mexican government documents that would allow them to travel within the country, Khalili said.<\/p>\n
Born in Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan, Khalili said he did electrical work on a U.S. military base. In Oct. 2021, he applied for a SIV, but wasn\u2019t assigned a case number until August 2022, visa application documents show. By that time, he\u2019d flown to Brazil.<\/p>\n
It was early December by the time Khalili\u2019s family bought tickets on a commercial bus from Mexico City to Tijuana, snaking through some of the regions of Mexico considered most dangerous by the U.S. State Department because of violent crime and kidnapping.<\/p>\n
In Sinaloa state, he recounted, a man in a balaclava with a gun hooked to his belt boarded the bus and demanded money while another man in what appeared to be a police uniform looked on. Khalili said the men got off the bus after his family paid the masked man 34,000 pesos ($1,700).<\/p>\n
Khalili recorded a video of the incident which he shared with Reuters soon after it occurred. Reuters couldn\u2019t confirm the payment.<\/p>\n
In the border state of Sonora, immigration authorities stopped the bus, Khalili said, ordering the driver to take the migrants to an immigration office.<\/p>\n
Fearing they would be deported, the migrants scattered, wandering for hours through dense desert brush.<\/p>\n
Mexico\u2019s National Institute of Migration (INM) did not respond to questions about Khalili\u2019s experience in Mexico.<\/p>\n
Around midnight about a week later, Khalili and his family huddled below the 18-foot slatted steel wall separating Tijuana from San Diego, preparing to scale a flimsy ladder and jump into the United States, he said.<\/p>\n
He helped his grandmother descend by sliding down the steel slats with her feet on his shoulders, he said.<\/p>\n
Border agents took the migrants to a detention center, Khalili said, and about 36 hours later, he was released into the United States with a notice to appear in immigration court in May.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the border crossings and immigration cases of the Afghans profiled in this story.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the harrowing journey Khalili said he would counsel other Afghans not to risk it. \u201cThey must not come this way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An economic crisis has spiraled in the country. More than half the population relies on humanitarian assistance MEXICO Their journey starts with a humanitarian visa for Brazil: one of the few remaining exit routes for Afghans fleeing Taliban rule. It ends, after a perilous trek overland through Latin America across at least 11 countries, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-311426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n