For some Afghans fleeing Taliban rule, the journey starts with a humanitarian visa for Brazil. It ends – after a long and perilous trek overland across at least 11 countries – with scaling a towering border wall and jumping onto U.S. soil
Their journey starts with a humanitarian visa for Brazil: one of the few remaining exit routes for Afghans fleeing Taliban rule.
U.S. border agents apprehended 2,132 Afghans last year – a close to 30-fold increase over the prior year – with nearly half arriving in November and December, U.S. government data show. “Just getting out of the country is hard. And then if you do, it doesn’t mean that you’ve reached safety,” said Anne Richard, who served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration from 2012 to 2017.
Last year, 2,200 Afghans crossed through the lawless jungle region between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap – the only land route from South America toward the U.S. border – with nearly half crossing in November and December. In all of 2021, just 24 Afghans crossed, according to Panamanian government data.
At baggage claim, he called an Afghan acquaintance who told him to head to Terminal 2, where he could find other Afghans. Once there, he said, he put his name on a waiting list for shelter spots.From 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 “diversity” visa, designed for nationals of countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.
About 90,000 Afghans are awaiting decisions on their SIVs, according to Congressional reports from fall 2022. After 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.Osmani’s 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.
Migrants line up to cross into Ecuador from Colombia at the Rumichaca border bridge in Tulcan, Ecuador. Many Afghans began using this overland route at the end of 2022. REUTERS/Daniel Tapia/August 26, 2019By 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.
The Ziwaris fled to Iran overland, carrying one change of clothes and some money from selling Humaira’s jewelry. At 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.
For many migrants the most treacherous leg of the journey is the multi-day trek through a jungle region between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap. Nahida Nabizada was early in her pregnancy when she and her husband set out on foot. in the United States since the U.S. troop withdrawal, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security , thousands more have applied to leave the country.
So, in late 2022 they headed into the Darien where, Nahida said, “every step was filled with danger.” She fell multiple times as they walked from daybreak to dusk, slipping on steep muddy paths and once falling in a river. In response to Reuters questions, the government said: “Panama 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.”
Afghan migrants wander through a desert landscape in Sonora state in Mexico on December 8, 2022, after fleeing Mexican immigration officers who had stopped their Tijuana-bound bus. Fazal Khalili/Handout via REUTERSAfghan and other migrants sit in boats near the southern Mexico town of San Pedro Tapanatepec after a 12-hour boat ride up the Pacific Coast in late October 2022.
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’t assigned a case number until August 2022, visa application documents show. By that time, he’d flown to Brazil. In the border state of Sonora, immigration authorities stopped the bus, Khalili said, ordering the driver to take the migrants to an immigration office.
A section of the border wall between Mexico and the United States, as pictured from Tijuana, Mexico. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes/August 1, 2022
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