Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto right, shakes hands with mother Nazanin joined by wife Shabana, Mohammad “Benny” Shirzad and his father Abdul on April 7, 2023, in Henderson, Nevada. (L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)
Editor’s note: This is the sixth story in an occasional series. The Review-Journal agreed to omit some last names for the safety of family members still in Afghanistan.
(Tribune News Service) — In her first meeting with an Afghan family she helped to reunite in Las Vegas, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto vowed to work to fix a “broken” immigration system and later acknowledged a failure by the Biden administration to “manage expectations” for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In a wide-ranging, 90-minute meeting late Friday, the Nevada Democrat offered her continued assistance to Mohammad “Benny” Shirzad as he seeks asylum for his parents, who with his wife have reunited with him in Las Vegas. Before the senator’s intervention, Shirzad’s family, who had fled to Pakistan, feared Pakistani authorities would deport them back to Afghanistan before they could plead their case at the U.S. embassy.
‘It’s going take Congress to fix it’
“The immigration process in general is broken and it is taking too long,” Cortez Masto told the Shirzads and Ellen and Scott Hoffman, their host family.
Many in Congress are asking the administration what it needs to improve the process, she said. “And we’re told, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control,’ ” she said.
“So this is an example of a system that is broken. … and that’s why it’s going to take Congress to fix it,” she continued, noting, however, that immigration legislation with bipartisan support is stalled.
Nazanin, Shirzad’s mother, thanked Cortez Masto for helping the family get to safety. “We can live in peace,” the former human rights aid worker said, with her son translating. “We’re out of this terrible situation.”
In August 2021, Shirzad, then 26, was evacuated out of Kabul as Afghanistan’s capital fell to the Taliban. The flight attendant for an Afghan airline had been assisting with evacuation flights for Americans until U.S. soldiers told him and his crew their lives were in danger and to board a military aircraft.
After processing at New Jersey’s Fort Dix, Shirzad, alone and penniless, came to Las Vegas to live with the parents of the U.S. Air Force pilot who had flown his evacuation flight.
From left, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto speaks with Mohammad “Benny” Shirzad, his father Abdul, wife Shabana and mother Nazanin along with Ellen and a Scott Hoffman and others on April 7, 2023, in Henderson, Nevada. (L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)
Shirzad, who until his family’s safety was threatened by the Taliban had worked for a U.S. contractor aiding the U.S.-backed government, served as an impromptu translator for Air Force pilot Christopher Hoffman. The pilot would later connect Shirzad with his parents.
‘We thank you for your help’
Cortez Masto met with the Shirzads and the Hoffmans late Friday afternoon at the military family’s Henderson home.
Scott Hoffman, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, complained to the senator of the crushing bureaucracy they faced at every turn of the family’s immigration odyssey.
Despite completing hundreds of pages of paperwork, and securing statements to corroborate the family’s background, “It seems like nobody really cares when you’re talking to them,” Hoffman said about the government offices and officials contacted.
“We thank you for your help,” he said to the senator, adding, “It took us nine or 10 months to get to your level, though.”
Shirzad told the senator that his countrymen are starving and that if they wish to survive they must join the Taliban or “they will not get any food, any money, any job.”
Cortez Masto said that she and other members of Congress are looking for ways to more effectively get aid to the country.
Hoffman, a former staff officer at U.S. Central Command — the administrative headquarters for military operations in the Afghanistan region — said that keeping 2,000 troops in the country could have thwarted the Taliban’s toppling of the government.
“We turned over 30 million people to people worse than the Nazis,” he said.
In a document released Thursday, the Biden administration laid the blame for the deadly 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan squarely on the prior administration.The images of disorder during the fall of Kabul include scenes of Afghans falling from the undercarriage of American planes and Afghan families handing over infants over airport gates to save them.
After the meeting, the Review-Journal asked Cortez Masto if the Biden administration shared in the blame for the manner of the withdrawal. “There’s no doubt it was set into motion by the previous administration,” she said, which set dates for withdrawal.
“I will say there was a failure to manage the expectations of what was going to happen,” she said. Those on the ground, she said, needed to know “what to expect was going to happen that day and to prepare for it.”
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