From Mazar to Manhattan: How a Young Couple Escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan

By Monica Haider, CNN

(CNN) — Deep in the jungle, in Panama’s infamous Darien Gap, a lawyer and a dentist from Afghanistan kept pressing.

With 77-pound backpacks on their backs, Ali, 29, and Leila, 27, whose names have been changed to protect their identities and legal status, had already faced political unrest in their native country. They had crossed an ocean and set out on foot, never knowing where they would next sleep or when or what they would next eat.

Now nature threatened to disrupt their goal of reaching the United States, which held the promise of opportunity and freedom that had lured immigrants from faraway places for generations.

“It was very dangerous,” Ali recalls. “There were animals, wild animals, birds. We heard their sounds and saw them up close.” The journey was complicated. “In some places you got stuck, so you stopped and pushed things out of the way,” he recalls.

Even finding food was difficult, especially for Ali and Leila, who keep their diet halal for religious reasons.

“All we said was chicken and rice,” he said as he searched for food. But basic supplies were not enough to keep them in good condition. “Our health was not in good condition.”

“Mosquitoes bit our feet and hands, we got sunburned and we suffered from stomach pain, back pain and foot pain,” he said.

“We had no more patience.”

And the worst was yet to come.

Millions of people are fleeing Afghanistan

Three years ago this week, Ali and Leila faced an uncertain future in Afghanistan. The U.S. withdrawal, completed in August 2021, was nearly complete, the resurgence of the oppressive Taliban regime was steadily taking shape, and the nation was turning back the clock away from democracy and toward autocracy.

They held out against the Taliban regime for nearly five months before deciding to flee the country, risking their lives in the hopes of crossing the border into the US and somehow avoiding deportation or death.

“We tried to stay, but we couldn’t do it anymore,” Ali said.

Ali and Leila lived a comfortable life in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. They both spent most of their childhood in an Afghanistan occupied by American troops, marking a new chapter for Afghanistan after decades of division and war following the fall of the monarchy, the rise of communism under the Soviets, and later the extremist takeover by Al-Qaeda. In the years since, more than 6 million Afghans have been displaced across the world.

In January 2022, Ali and Leila were granted a three-month visa to visit Iran, but it didn’t feel like home.

“The people are good, but the government discriminates,” Ali said, referring to the way Iran, a Shiite-majority country, favors one group over another.

“The Sunni sect doesn’t have much freedom there. They don’t have any Sunni mosques; all the mosques are for Shiites,” he said.

After living in Iran for a year, they applied to travel to Brazil and were granted a six-month visa. Five days after arriving in South America, they set sail for a 33-day journey to the United States, where they became part of the migrant flow at the southern border.

Different paths, different immigration challenges

Under the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome, more than 88,500 Afghan nationals immigrated to the U.S., according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, 77,000 were paroled to the U.S. “on a case-by-case basis, for compelling humanitarian reasons, for a period of two years.”

When people come through a guaranteed program like Operation Allies Welcome, the U.S. government provides funding and immigration assistance. But for those who cross the southern border, asylum status is not expedited, Dylanna Grasinger, vice chair of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, told CNN.

“That’s a different set of challenges,” Grasinger explained. In many cases, people wait for years and are denied asylum.

The commission has processed about 100 asylum applications from Afghans who crossed the southern border since August 2021.

For many other Afghans, like Ali and Leila, who did not qualify for the program, emigrating was a dangerous endeavor. They continued to move north, hoping to enter the U.S. by illegally crossing the southern border, with no guarantee that they would make it or be allowed to stay.

Google Maps, backpacks and a dream

“We set up a tent, slept in it and left the next morning,” Ali said. “On the fifth day we reached the end of the jungle in Panama and the immigration officer gave us a form saying we could leave Panama and enter neighboring Costa Rica.”

According to Ali, the migrants were “Chinese, Afghan, Brazilian, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, from all countries.”

“The country that gave us the most trouble was Mexico,” Ali said. “We couldn’t get our money out of the bank, and because we didn’t have money to pay for a hotel, we slept on the floor of the airport for two nights.”

“If you had money and didn’t pay, they said they would deport us.” They would take money by force, he said. Ali still doesn’t know who those people were, whether they were government officials or the mafia, he said.

Ali also recalled being robbed three times in Mexico and being left without any money. “They pulled our hair, our ears, they took our phones, jackets, pants.”

But throughout the journey, their fellow migrants helped each other as they headed north. For the final stretch toward the U.S.-Mexico border, they and a few others along the way rented a van together. At the border crossing, they paid for the ride, walked from the car to the wall, and climbed over it.

“I didn’t hurt myself, but I did fall once,” he said of the climb. “Our feet were swollen.”

Neither Ali nor Leila were afraid of the police presence. In fact, they wanted to face the authorities. “We lost sight of the fear,” Ali said. “When we got to the other side, the American police were standing there and saying to us, ‘Welcome, welcome.’”

After two days of scorching heat and cold nights of misery, but freedom by all other counts, they were led to a camp manned by U.S. immigration officials. Sixteen months after fleeing their hometown, they reached America.

“They gave Ali a two-year visa, but not Leila,” Ali said, laughing. “I don’t know why. They only documented us as one person.”

They were sent to various destinations in San Diego County before being flown to New York, where they first registered with other migrants at a hotel in downtown Manhattan.

When they ended up at a school on Staten Island, the male and female dorms were mixed, which posed a challenge. “We’re religious, we’re Muslim, and we can’t sleep with our husbands in front of 30 people,” Ali had told them.

The situation forced the couple to leave again and they stayed in a hotel for four months until they were told to leave.

A new home in New York

They turned to a new Afghan friend and stayed in their house, which was under construction. Ali and Leila slept on cardboard for two months.

Today they live in Harlem, both working, with a steady income stream and living in peace.

They have been granted asylum through the help of a lawyer, though their careers are still up in the air. Leila can use her dental skills in the U.S. and start working as a dentist’s assistant, Ali said.

However, his law degree from Afghanistan and his poor command of English do not make him suitable for a career as a lawyer. Even if he were to go to school, he would not be able to work enough to support himself.

If Ali could go back in time, would he have stayed in Afghanistan or made the trip? He wouldn’t change a thing.

“We are a thousand times happy because here is a future attainable,” he said. “Every right that an American has, we have,” he said. “Here everything is fair for everyone.”

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