“Aslam” is a battle-hardened Afghan army veteran who fought on the front lines against the Taliban in Kandahar Province. “Mohammed” was ambushed and shot by Taliban assailants because he had spent years defending the rights of abused women. Captain “Nadir” collected and analyzed intelligence for the Afghan National Defense Forces in close collaboration with US troops.

All three men had battled or publicly defied the Taliban, and they feared for their lives and their families' lives after the US withdrew its troops in the summer of 2021. (They asked me to withhold their real names or initials because they still fear reprisal by the Taliban.) And all three had been led to believe that the United States would provide them transport to safety and perhaps even a life in America.

They spent years hiding and waiting, but no help arrived. So they fled, eventually finding their way to Latin America, where they joined the river of migrants from many nations flowing through the deadly jungle of Panama's Darién Gap and the sun-scorched plains of Mexico en route to the US border.

Although the United States and its allies evacuated some 80,000 Afghans before the fall of Kabul, many thousands more were left behind. According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, about 19,000 Afghans applied for asylum between 2021 and October 2023. By many accounts, most have not received it.

Many fled to refugee camps in Pakistan or Iran, where they faced threats of expulsion before they fled again to Latin America and ultimately the US-Mexico border.

Read the rest of the article, originally published in the Boston Globe here.