Other travelers barely glanced at the reunion unfolding at Kansas City International Airport during the busy Labor Day weekend.

A little boy ran to clutch his awaiting father’s hand.

An older son embraced the father, sobbing. Bouquets of pink roses were given to two of the arriving women.

Everyone dabbed tears: the father, the wife, the daughters, the sons, the attorney, the photographer hired to document the event by an international humanitarian agency, the translator and the group of about a dozen men who accompanied the man to the airport.

“Thank you, thank you,” the father kept repeating, nodding to those gathered. 

This was no ordinary reunion.

The family had been separated for five years. The father was resettled in Kansas City, and his wife and children remained in Afghanistan. 

The man served as an Afghan ally to the U.S. military during the war against al-Qaeda following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 

The continued separation of Afghan allies from their families is one thread of many traumatic stories being revisited as the nation marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks.

When Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, the man was among the Afghans forced to flee, as his loyalty to the U.S. meant a death sentence from the militants.

Resettled in Kansas City under asylum laws, he began the long legal route to bringing his wife and children to the U.S., as they were also threatened by the Taliban.

A month before they’d hoped to leave Afghanistan, their travel documents were denied under a travel ban set by order of President Donald Trump in June 2025.

It took a year and a federal lawsuit to get the wife and six children out of Afghanistan. 

The Asylum Clinic Kansas City, a nonprofit focused on specialized immigration cases, handled the man’s initial filings, including his asylum case. 

The clinic also guided as the man became one of seven plaintiffs nationally who successfully sued the U.S. government after the Trump administration initiated a travel ban against 19 countries and used it to block some Afghan families from reuniting.

The lawsuit, which is under appeal, could ultimately affect thousands of similar families, including several dozen Afghans also represented by the Asylum Clinic. 

The Beacon is not naming the man or his family or showing photos of their faces. 

Two of his adult children remain in Afghanistan. They are ineligible for some reunification programs because they are married, but they could be targeted by the Taliban due to their father’s service to the U.S. military.

The man wasn’t sure when or if he’d ever see his wife and children again. 

Through a translator, he said the moment was unbelievable, the happiest of his life, as he waited for the family to descend the airport escalators on Saturday afternoon of the holiday weekend.

On July 29, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found that the government’s use of the travel ban doesn’t apply to the families of approved asylees in the U.S. The court ordered the government to expedite the reunion of the seven plaintiffs’ families.

The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) teamed with two D.C. law firms in the case, Williams & Connolly and Keler & Kershow PLLC.

Lupe Aguirre, deputy director of U.S. litigation for IRAP, released a statement after the ruling. 

“August marks five years since our clients’ lives were thrown into chaos by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,” she said. “Because of their support for the United States, they remain in danger from the Taliban and our asylum laws are intended to protect them. Today the court affirmed that the State Department cannot use the travel ban to abandon this population, or any asylees seeking family reunification.”

Landmines and gunfire by the Taliban

The man described his role during the war in an interview held months before the Virginia court ruling.

His primary language is Dari. Through a translator provided by the Asylum Clinic, he said he served as a mechanic. 

He spoke about the stress of the past few years, showing a photo of himself with a full head of thick hair and smiling broadly. He’s balding now, aged by the tension and more recent work injuries, including when a drill bit struck his hand.

He briefly mentioned being shot during the war. The lawsuit contains more explicit details.

He joined the Afghanistan Defense Ministry in 2006 as a soldier. He was responsible for the upkeep of vehicles that transported weapons and injured or dead soldiers between U.S. and Afghan bases.

He traveled with the convoys, navigating mine-riddled roads. The vehicles were often ambushed by the Taliban, coming under heavy gunfire and mortar attacks. He repaired the vehicles, even while under fire.

One explosion severely damaged the man’s face and wrist. Another time he was shot in the hand and foot. Soldiers, his colleagues, died in his arms.

Later, one of his sons was shot and wounded by the Taliban. The militants came to the family home twice, looking for the father after he’d left Afghanistan aboard a U.S. military flight that evacuated him to Dubai.

He entered the U.S. in October 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome and was granted asylum in April 2024.

Leslie Tabb, the man’s immigration attorney with the Asylum Clinic Kansas City, wrote about the man’s case on an email listserv last fall. A group of D.C. attorneys contacted her, seeking plaintiffs to challenge the government’s use of the travel ban on Afghan families with an approved asylee relative in the U.S.

“I told him that a group of plaintiffs wanted to sue the government over this policy and asked if he wanted to join,” Tabb said. “He said yes immediately.”

By that point, the man said, he had grown desperate. 

He’d saved enough to spend about $2,000 per family member for fees and documents, and to pay for their travel to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in August 2025 for interviews at a U.S. embassy. 

The family also sold belongings to raise money and rented out a floor of their home.

The consul visit, they believed, went well. Updated photos were taken for their visas.

But after several hours, the family was denied entry into the U.S. and handed a boilerplate letter informing them of the travel ban, which Trump had issued a month prior in a presidential proclamation.

They feared returning to Afghanistan, but had no choice.

Their dilemma shifted a year later, after the successful finding in the lawsuit, A.A. et al vs. U.S. Department of State.

The government has filed an appeal. But a stay of the order was not granted, Tabb said.

No One Left Behind, a nonpartisan advocacy group providing evacuation and resettlement help to Afghan and Iraqi allies, arranged flights.

Attorneys and other advocates closely monitored each step of the family’s travel: the issuance of travel documents, their arrival in Dubai, their passage through U.S. Customs and Border Protection and finally the flight’s landing in Kansas City.

The group arrived with eight suitcases and a backpack containing their documents. 

In just shy of 20 minutes, they exited the airport and were on their way to a Kansas City-area home. 

A special meal of traditional Afghan dishes awaited — kabuli pulao, kabob, dopiaza and manto (savory rice and meats, skewers of grilled meats, a stew and steamed dumplings).

Twenty-five years after 9/11 and the longest war in U.S. history

The stories of the separated Afghan families are threads in the trauma and grief that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The initial attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — and a flight that crashed in Pennsylvania — killed 2,977 people, excluding the 19 hijackers of the planes.

By Oct. 7, the U.S. had decided to go after the architect of the attacks, Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan, where the Taliban was giving him protection.

The 20-year war became the longest in U.S. history, and 2,459 U.S. military personnel died.

By some estimates, nearly 4,000 contractors of the Department of Defense also died, a number that includes some Afghanistan civilians.

An estimated 150,000 to 175,000 Afghans died during the fighting, including 66,000 to 78,000 who were Afghan military or police, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

The capital, Kabul, was retaken by the Taliban in August 2021 and a chaotic retreat began with the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Afghan allies continue to be the focus of many humanitarian efforts, including those led by Afghan Evac, a nonprofit that advocates for the U.S. government to fulfill promises made to these wartime allies and their families. The group issued a report in August detailing special immigrant visas issued to such allies by every administration since the conflict ended.

That report, “The Unfinished Mission: America’s Broken Promise to Afghan Wartime Allies and Mission Partners,” is critical of some current policies, noting that “America built a program to keep its promise to the Afghans who served alongside it, ran it at record scale, and then shut it off by policy. The machinery works. What is missing is will.”

For Tabb, the paperwork and legal saga of her Afghan clients’ journey took far too long, for a family that endured so much during and following the war as U.S. allies. 

But she consistently emphasizes that their story is also hopeful, with a happy conclusion in an era when so much news about immigration remains negative, troubling and anti-immigrant.

“It shouldn’t take this long or be this hard to reunite the family of one of our own allies,” Tabb said.