Imagine you’re taking a summer school trip with your child, and through a series of world events completely beyond your control, you find yourselves trapped on another continent, surrounded by a hostile army.
This is what has happened to dozens of students and their parents from California who are now stuck in Afghanistan.
The Daily Mail reported six students and two parents returned. At least 18 students plus five other families are still waiting to get home:
The Cajon Valley Union School District announced Thursday that a family of eight — six children and two adults — has returned home safely.’One of our families did arrive in the United States and are home safe. Which we are completely ecstatic about,’ Michael Serban, Director of Family and Community Engagement, told NBC 7.Officials have not revealed how the family managed to get back to the states or indicated if they have actually made it back to San Diego.Sixteen parents and more than two-dozen students, ranging from preschoolers to high schoolers, from the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, which has a large Afghan refugee population, traveled to Afghanistan over summer break to visit grandparents and other relatives.
What a nightmare.
Cameron Jenkins reports at The Hill:
Dozens of California students, parents stranded in Afghanistan after summer trip abroadDozens of California students and parents are stranded in Afghanistan after taking a summer trip to the country.More than 20 students and 16 parents from the Cajon Valley Union School District in El Cajon, Calif., visited Afghanistan on summer vacation. Now they are among thousands of people who are waiting to leave the country amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal that has caused political unrest across the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times.Cajon Valley Superintendent David Miyashiro alerted school board members on Tuesday that he would be meeting with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to discuss the situation, the Times noted.Miyashiro told the news outlet that the families traveled to Afghanistan on special visas for U.S. military service and that the school district was able to provide government officials with information on the families as they work to locate them.The stranded students reportedly attend different schools within the school district.
Luke Gentile of the Washington Examiner has more:
California students and parents stranded in Kabul are ‘scared’ and ‘trapped’The roughly 24 students and 16 adults from California stranded in the Kabul area are “scared” and “trapped,” said a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, adding that the Biden administration “has been too slow to manage this crisis.”The students and their parents traveled to Afghanistan to visit extended family, said Howard Shen, the Cajon Valley Union School District Family and Community Engagement media contact, in a statement.”Congressman Issa and staff are aware of the location of several American citizens, and we have been in direct and consistent contact with them,” Jonathan Wilcox, Issa’s communications director, told the Washington Examiner.The situation is fluid, but Issa has spoken with the stranded Americans through voice contact, he said.”They are scared, stranded, and trapped in the Kabul area,” he said. “I know the president and his press secretary have said this isn’t happening, but that’s dead wrong.”
It’s a good thing Rep. Darrell Issa has stepped up to help.
You have to wonder who thought this trip was a good idea.
Featured image via YouTube.
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