The San Juan Unified school district in Sacramento, California, confirmed at least 24 students are still stranded in Afghanistan. This is down from the 150 the district discovered were in the country after the students kept missing school.
ABC7 San Francisco also reported a 3-year-old boy is still in Afghanistan with his family. They are also residents of Sacramento.
The toddler has an American passport. His family members are permanent U.S. residents.
California Rep. Jackie Speier and her staff tried to help the family out of Afghanistan. She provided a letter that gave the family permission to safely pass through the Kabul airport and come home.
That did not happen:
Armed with that letter, the boy, his father and several other family members approached the airport, but the Taliban attacked.Brown said, “And they were stopped by a Taliban checkpoint, and they received physical beatings at the gate and they were pushed back where they had to flee and return to a safe house.”
ABC Bay Area learned the family and the boy decided to make a move after meeting with other Americans who want to leave Afghanistan “without the normal channels of the U.S. government, in the chaos that we left behind.”
Over 1,400 Afghan refugees attend schools in the San Juan Unified district:
The district pulled attendance records and identified about 150 students who might be affected by the turmoil — an almost certain overcount that might also include students who simply transferred to another district.“We are trying to determine why these students haven’t been at school,” Raj Rai, a spokeswoman with the district, wrote this week. “Anecdotally we have heard that some may be in Afghanistan, but we do not have a concrete number at this point.”Rai said students from Mira Loma High School are among those attempting to return.
A 9-year-old and 15-year-old with their mother went to Afghanistan to be with their father as he died from cancer.
Their older sister is trying to get them home. They are staying at a relative’s home in Kabul. They could not make it to the airport.
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