WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The United States is not allowing 117 people, including 59 children, to enter the country, keeping them waiting at an airport in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi after being evacuated from Afghanistan.
The organizers of the flight,” Project Dynamo, made the announcement in a Facebook post, with reports announcing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to be behind the denial to entry.
“Right now we have 59 children sleeping on airport chairs and cold airport floors - not the warm bed with a hot meal that we’d arranged for all of them stateside - because the U.S. Government denied our flight clearance into ALL U.S. ports of entry. All of them. For a plane load of Americans,” it said in the post. “They escaped the regime they were running from only to have the government they were running HOME TO, turn them away. This cannot be what America does to Americans. Bring Dynamo 01 home. Now. Today.”
Bryan Stern, the founder of Project Dynamo, said the people were at an airport in Abu Dhabi waiting to fly to the U.S. but the DHS was not allowing the flight into the U.S.
“They will not allow a charter on an international flight into a U.S. port of entry,” Stern said. “I have a big, beautiful, giant, humongous Boeing 787 that I can see parked in front of us… I have crew. I have food.”
A senior U.S. State Department had said earlier that the United States was aware of about 100 people ready to land in the country in the wake of U.S. chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The people are stranded in the United Arabic Emirates despite promises by U.S. president Joe Biden to prioritize the evacuation of American citizens and residents from Afghanistan.
The U.S. defeat in the country and failure to provide a safe passage for U.S. citizens and local Afghans serving them after the retreat has triggered widespread domestic and international criticism.