Ahmad’s wife and son were approved for visas in 2018 but Afghanistan collapsed before they received their paperwork.
Bilal Ahmad already lost his job, and he’s pretty sure he’s lost his New York City apartment, too, after spending more than three months with his family in a United Arab Emirate refugee camp.
Ahmad, 28, is an American citizen who traveled into Afghanistan in August to rescue his wife and five-year-old son from the chaos surrounding the Taliban takeover of the country and the Biden administration’s bungled evacuation after nearly 20 years of war.
He and his family eventually flew out of Afghanistan in early October. But they’ve been stuck in the International Humanitarian City refugee compound ever since, even though records indicate he started the immigration process for his wife and son back in 2017.
“The only thing which we were waiting for was the visas to be issued. That’s all,” Ahmad said.
National Review learned about Ahmad’s case after publishing a story last week about another American citizen who also has been stuck in the Humanitarian City refugee compound since October after traveling into Afghanistan to rescue his wife. Ahmad’s case was featured on Fox News last month, and he’s also received support from members of Congress, including Democratic New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Grace Meng (D., Queens).
“My heart aches for this family,” Meng wrote in a press release in December announcing that she was pushing for the U.S. Department of State to expedite the Ahmad family’s case. “Bilal went to Afghanistan to ensure the well-being of his family and to bring them to safety here. Months later, they should still not be stuck overseas, and his livelihood should not be at risk because he sought to keep his wife and child out of harm’s way.”
In an email to National Review, a State Department spokesman declined to comment on Ahmad’s family’s case due to “privacy considerations.” The State Department said it continues to “work diligently to facilitate the relocation of all eligible individuals to the United States.”
“Some individuals whose cases are being processed have U.S. citizen family members that have chosen to remain at the Emirates Humanitarian City,” the State Department said. “These U.S. citizens have been given the option to depart from the EHC to return to the United States, should they wish to do so, but have chosen to remain with their family members at this time.”
In an interview with National Review, Ahmad said that in 2009, when he was still a teenager, he started working with the U.S. military to help stabilize his family’s finances after his father was killed in a motorbike crash. After working for the military for five years, he received a special immigrant visa and moved to the U.S. in 2014, settling in Queens. He said he knew a lot about American culture from his work with the military, and from watching Hollywood movies. “I thought I was going to meet Spider-Man,” he joked about living in Queens.
He worked for a couple of years as a cashier in a relative’s restaurant, he said, while also driving for Uber and working on his IT skills. Every six to nine months he would travel back to Afghanistan to visit family, he said. He eventually met a girl back in Afghanistan, and they were married in January 2016. Their son was born in December of that year. Records indicate that in 2017 he began the application process to bring his wife and son to live with him in the U.S.
“In 2018, everything was approved. And then in 2019, I was kind of waiting for their interviews and then the Covid hit all the U.S. pretty bad, so everything was closed, and I was waiting and waiting,” Ahmad said. “Then it comes to 2021, and I was kind of like sure that maybe one or two months I’m going to get the visas. Then Afghanistan fell apart.”
Ahmad, who became a U.S. citizen last year, said he was scared when he saw the Taliban had taken over Kandahar Province, where he was from. He decided to travel into Afghanistan to rescue his wife and son, flying into Tajikistan in late August, and crossing the border from there.
“That was the first time that I saw the Taliban flag,” he said. “I was kind of scared. I was thinking they were definitely going to kill me. But they kind of didn’t say anything.”
Once he located his wife and son, they tried to get to the airport in Kabul, but Ahmad said they turned back when he saw the chaos outside the gates. Ahmad and his family ended up stuck in Afghanistan for over a month, eventually flying out of Mazar-i-Sharif on October 8 on a private charter flight, he said. They’ve been stuck in Humanitarian City ever since.
Because he is an American citizen, Ahmad has been offered an opportunity to fly back to the U.S., but he refuses to leave his wife and son alone in Humanitarian City.
He said he’s tried to work with the State Department and government officials at the compound, but he feels like his case is being ignored. On January 14, the National Visa Center notified Ahmad that his wife’s and son’s immigrant visa applications have been transferred to the U.S. embassy in Abu Dhabi, according to emails obtained by National Review. The emails said they should be contacted by embassy officials “soon” to schedule an interview.
Ahmad said he’s already lost the IT job he started in 2020. He said he negotiated with his boss late last year to hold the job open a little longer, but he has since been replaced.
“A friend of mine told me last week they’ve already got a replacement of you,” Ahmad said.
He’s also behind on his rent and on his insurance payments with the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission. He believes he may have already lost his apartment, and he could lose his ability to work as an Uber driver once he eventually gets back to Queens, whenever that may be. There are constant rumors that another flight is imminent, he said, but the rumored dates — late December, early January — keep passing with no new departures.
“A lot of other people are here waiting for the flights,” he said. “I don’t know how they’re going to deal with all these people.”
He’s frustrated by how long it’s taken to process his wife and son’s paperwork. He feels like he and his family are being detained in a “prison.”
“The stress, the depression that me, my wife, and my kid is going through, it’s very, very hard.”