Rahimi

On August 25, 2021, M. Rahimi reached out to a Task Force Argo volunteer Rebecca after getting her number directly from one of her friends who had successfully escaped Afghanistan with Rebecca’s help. M. Rahimi is the wife of a Legal Permanent Resident who was in the United States. She was on her own and terrified. She said, “I’m in a very bad situation. I cry every day.” Rebecca and Cheryl, another Task Force Argo volunteer, immediately added Rahimi to their tracking database and submitted her for multiple rescue methods, including official State Department Notification, Deptartment of Defense Non-combatant Evacuation Order Request, and various flight manifesting groups. For days they tried to get her into the gates of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. One day, she sat on a bus at one of the gates for close to 15 hours waiting to get inside. Ultimately, the bus driver abandoned her and several other LPR spouses outside of the gates late at night.

Rebecca and Cheryl did not give up and stayed in constant communication with Rahimi. State Department Consular Officers, the day before the end of the official evacuation, finally decided to include LPR spouses in their intake. Rebecca submitted Rahimi multiple times and told her to stay outside the gate until a Consular Officer called. While she waited, Rahimi was mugged and beaten by unknown men passing by, but she stayed strong and refused to leave the gate. The other LPR spouses left her and returned to their homes, leaving Rahimi all by herself outside the gate of the airport.

Rebecca stayed on the phone with Rahimi and called State Department Consular Officers repeatedly. The Consular Officers insisted they had already called Rahimi and she had refused to report to their pick-up location. Rebecca knew that was not the case, as Rahimi sent her screenshots of her call logs and Whatsapp texts proving no one had called. She knew there had been a mistake. Rebecca finally convinced the Consular Officers to call Rahimi again, and Rahimi was finally picked up and taken by helicopter onto the Kabul airport airfield. The screenshot of their text conversation depicts these events.

Rahimi flew the next day to Doha, Qatar, where she was processed and awaited flight to the United States. Rebecca and Cheryl stayed in touch with her every day and let her know she was not alone. Finally, Rahimi made it to a refugee processing center on an Air Force base in New Mexico. There, she awaited reunion with her husband. Rahimi reached out to Rebecca and Cheryl many times and said they saved her. “You know you’re like an angel for me I really appreciate your help. [Without] your help I couldn’t able to be here.”

The other spouses who refused to stay at the airport are still trapped in Afghanistan