After months of delay, Afghan students are finally returning home to Sacramento

Two months since the first reports that dozens of California kids were stranded in Afghanistan, a growing number of students from the Sacramento area are returning home.

It’s welcome news, especially to school officials. But it comes with a major caveat — school leaders are still unsure exactly when and how those who remain will get home and return to classes.

By late September, nearly 50 students from the San Juan Unified and Sacramento City Unified school districts were known to have been stranded weeks after the U.S. completed its withdrawal from the country and Taliban fighters took Kabul. Those numbers fluctuated as district officials learned of more families who were in limbo.

Two Sacramento City Unified families, who each have three children in the district, evacuated in recent days. Some were shuttled to the International Humanitarian City near Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to quarantine. Others have hopscotched by land and a series of flights to get back to the U.S.

In the process, students missed two months of school. Many have not yet returned to campus.

“We look forward to joyfully welcoming our students back when they are able to return to school here in Sacramento,” read a statement from Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jorge Aguilar. “We are mindful that they have endured harrowing experiences and may need help to process trauma as well as extra academic support. Our school sites provide a wide range of services for families relocating from Afghanistan, and we will be ready to support our returning students and their families in their transition back to home in Sacramento.”

Services include on-site counseling, academic and health services, and other basic needs.

San Juan Unified, which had at least 41 students trapped in Afghanistan in recent weeks, told The Sacramento Bee that some have since returned; others are on their way. Sixteen students have returned to Sacramento and 24 are still in Afghanistan, according to district officials.

“We are excited to learn that one of our San Juan Unified families has returned from Afghanistan,” read a statement from San Juan Unified. “We look forward to having the students from this family back in our schools very soon and stand ready to support them in any way that we can.”

San Juan students who are just returning to classes have missed about 55 days of school since being trapped overseas with their families.

In the mad-rush to extract Americans and those with Special Immigrant Visas stemming from their work alongside U.S. forces, crews were able to evacuate more than 120,000 people in the days after people flooded the tarmac in Kabul and crammed into a military transport plane, officials said.

Some from the Sacramento area tried to make it onto those flights but were instead left in a lurch with no clear way to get home.

Absent a central organizing entity, a piecemeal network of volunteers, former military personnel and school officials stepped into the fray. Superintendents and principals emerged as the primary purveyor of information about the missing kids and the ever-changing tallies. Some have made it a personal mission to bring their students home, communicating at all hours in an effort to get them back to Sacramento.

“Everybody needs this level of communication, they deserve this level of service,” said Nate McGill, principal at Ethel I. Baker Elementary School. He helped coordinate the evacuation of multiple students and their family members.

“We have done very intense outreach for very unsafe situations before,” McGill said. “This one just happens to be across the sea.”

After spending more than three months in Afghanistan as their father was dying from cancer, two San Juan Unified students, ages 9 and 15, finally returned Oct. 18 to Sacramento with their mother and older sisters.

When San Juan Unified School Board President Paula Villescaz heard the news of their returning flight, she turned off her air fryer and left home before she could finish dinner. She rushed to the airport and arrived just in time to meet the family.

“It’s been a month of touch and go,” she said with relief that the family was finally home.

There have been myriad obstacles in getting families back to Sacramento County, home to 9,700 Afghans — one of the largest populations of Afghans in the country. Sometimes it’s a matter of logistics, such as coordinating flights from Kabul, where things have been in flux the past two months. Other times, families aren’t able to fly back to the U.S. because it’s unclear whether they have had required vaccines.

For security reasons, school officials, military personnel and aid group workers involved in the evacuations won’t publicly disclose specifics on how families returned to the U.S. Hundreds of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents still need to leverage the escape routes.

After shoving aside her dinner plans and getting to the airport, Villescaz stood in the arrivals terminal and watched Nada, Sabrina and their family descend the escalator. Like most families returning from Afghanistan, they had no checked-in luggage. Nada arrived back in Sacramento wearing a beaded navy blue and yellow South Asian dress, paired with a bright yellow scarf.

Villescaz was the first to greet the family as they exited the elevator. Among her first words to Nada: “Did you miss school?”

Nada responded with a loud, enthusiastic, “Yes!”

This story was originally published November 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM.