Ghada Tafesh has fought to evacuate her family from Gaza since Israel’s attacks began in October. Tafesh, who was born in Gaza and currently lives in Maryland, says the process has been marred by chaos, confusion, and dead ends as she navigates the bureaucracy of U.S. agencies.

Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians, including about 12,000 children. The Israeli military has forced a mass displacement of most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population, and international human rights advocates have accused Israel of genocide and war crimes that include using starvation as a weapon of war. 

Tafesh’s family’s home in Gaza City was destroyed early into Israel’s assault.

“They’ve had to run for their lives repeatedly,” said Tafesh, who became a legal permanent resident in the U.S. after migrating from Gaza as a student over 10 years ago. She says her father underwent seven surgeries in recent months due to an untreated infection that developed into gangrene. Doctors had to perform most of the procedures without anesthesia because of a severe lack of medical supplies in Gaza and Israeli strikes targeting hospitals.

Tafesh’s mother, whose name isn’t being won’t be disclosed for safety reasons, first made it onto an evacuation list in November, though she only evacuated Gaza this month. She made a previous attempt in February at the Rafah crossing—the border with Egypt that is currently the only point of exit for Palestinians in Gaza. Tafesh traveled to Egypt to retrieve her mother in February, only to come back to the U.S. alone because when her mother attempted to cross, Tafesh says no U.S. embassy staff were present to process her. Tafesh’s ill father, brother, pregnant sister-in-law, and toddler niece stayed behind in Rafah amidst Israel’s ongoing attacks and a total siege blocking most humanitarian aid into the territory. 

Tafesh says her 61-year-old mother’s evacuation this month was arduous in part because she is diabetic and has hypertension and recently experienced a stroke. She was forced to wait for hours without food, water, or bathroom access before U.S. embassy staff finally arrived to usher evacuees into Egypt. Egypt has given people who’ve fled Gaza only 72 hours to remain in the country as they make other travel arrangements, though extensions could possibly be filed with Egyptian authorities, according to immigration attorneys who spoke to Prism.

Tafesh is critical of what she describes as a lack of communication and “clear and effective protocol for the U.S. evacuation process.”

“The lack of instructions and emergency contacts has left evacuees in a state of uncertainty, resulting in impractical and accommodating processes marked by significant travel delays, and, in many cases, repeated rejections,” she said. “The existing process disregards the physical, emotional, and mental strain experienced by U.S. evacuees in Gaza, many of whom risk their lives on extremely dangerous journeys to reach the border.” 

Tafesh continues to advocate on behalf of her family in Gaza to the U.S. State Department and her congressional representatives in Maryland. While her mom is out of Gaza, she is currently in immigration limbo and temporarily living in a hotel in Egypt. Tafesh is working to renew her mother’s Palestinian passport to proceed with her humanitarian parole application. 

“I don’t know what the next steps [are],” Tafesh said. 

Tafesh is part of a growing push in the U.S. by Palestinians and their supporters to pressure the Biden administration to expand the eligibility criteria for those who can receive assistance from the State Department to depart Gaza. Current guidelines exclude most family members of U.S. citizens—including uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, and siblings who are over the age of 21 or married. For green card holders, parents are also excluded from these guidelines.

Palestinians are also demanding expedited immigration relief for their relatives in Gaza, and for the Biden administration to create more accessible immigration pathways to the U.S. for Palestinians escaping Israel’s genocidal campaign. Earlier this month, the White House announced temporary relief shielding certain Palestinians already in the U.S. from deportation for at least 18 months. Attorneys and advocates say this is not enough. Lawsuits filed against the Biden administration also accuse federal agencies of failing to protect U.S. citizens in Gaza and the Gazan relatives of Palestinians living in the U.S. 

For Palestinians who are not considered “immediate” relatives under the State Department guidelines, the options for migration to the U.S. are extremely limited. 

Immigration attorneys with the coalition Project Immigration Justice for Palestinians (Project IJP) say they have worked on hundreds of cases since October for Palestinians trying to obtain  visitor visas, which  are often denied for Palestinians who cannot prove “non-immigrant intent.” This means U.S. officials have reason to believe applicants fleeing a war zone will stay in the U.S. permanently. 

For many, the only option to reunite with family is through a lengthy process called humanitarian parole that offers temporary entrance into the U.S. for people facing an urgent humanitarian crisis. Attorneys say it’s incredibly challenging to build visa and humanitarian parole cases when people’s homes have been decimated and valuable documents such as passports and birth certificates have been lost in the rubble or left behind as people fled repeated strikes. 

Asylum is only an option if it is requested on U.S. soil and even so, only a “tiny number” of Palestinian refugees have been admitted to the country over the last decade. 

“The U.S. immigration system is set up to exclude people—not to support or include people or to reunite anyone,” said California-based immigration attorney Ban Al-Wardi, a member of Project IJP. “And that’s not something unique for Palestinian cases, or for Arab cases, or Southwest Asian cases. We’re seeing it in the most violent form at the [U.S.] southern border [with Mexico]. It’s just a part of a policy of exclusion.” 

Immigration advocates say these policies also lead to family separations across multiple borders. 

M is a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor from northern Gaza who is currently working with Project IJP and Dearborn, Michigan immigration attorney Renee Dagher. To protect his identity, M is only using his first initial. He and his 13-year-old sister are U.S. citizens and, in November, were allowed to cross into Egypt with their mother, whose visitor visa application was denied because she could not prove non-immigrant intent. She’s currently in Cairo with M’s sister while M is in Illinois, living with family friends and working to obtain his high school diploma. 

“It’s been months since I last saw them,” M said as he recalled the nonstop bombing his family experienced in Gaza. “The last day of staying in the north, before we evacuated to Khan Younis, was the worst night of my life. We literally thought we wouldn’t see the morning.”

Without the government coming out and saying that [they] are going to prioritize processing applications from Palestinians in Gaza, there’s no guarantee that any of our efforts will come to anything.

Sophia Akbar

Because M is under the age of 21, he cannot yet petition for his mom to come to the U.S. The only real option is through humanitarian parole, which could take months or years for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to process. 

“[Humanitarian parole] is not built for emergency situations like this,” said immigration attorney Sophia Akbar, who is based in Chicago, Illinois, and is assisting several Palestinians in the U.S. as part of Project IJP. “Typically, those applications collect dust for years before [receiving] any decisions. Without the government coming out and saying that [they] are going to prioritize processing applications from Palestinians in Gaza, there’s no guarantee that any of our efforts will come to anything.”

Even for Palestinians who have obtained visas, there is no guarantee they’ll be allowed into the U.S. Several immigration attorneys working with Project IJP told Prism that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have revoked visitor visas of Palestinians and denied them entry after intense questioning at U.S. airports. 

Attorney Mahsa Khanbabai said one of her clients from Gaza was forced to return to Egypt after CBP officials canceled his visa when he arrived at Boston Logan International Airport in Massachusetts a few days after Oct. 7. Khanbabai’s client, a Palestinian physician, is still in Egypt where he is reapplying for a J-1 visa that is designed for foreign scholars, researchers, students, and others.

“[He] was questioned for hours and then was allowed to withdraw his request to enter, which is actually a good thing compared to being deported from the airport—the terminology for that is expedited removal, which is what happened to many of the Iranian students and scholars that I’ve represented over the years,” Khanbabai said. 

Attorneys and advocates are concerned over how these cases are handled by CPB. They also question how other federal agencies may be dealing with immigration applications from Palestinians, including those who might have held civil service jobs in Gaza or whose relatives worked for Gaza’s government.

CBP declined to comment.

Another immense challenge in trying to advance these applications is the difficulty of placing people on a list that would allow them to leave Gaza. Many desperate to evacuate have paid thousands of dollars in bribes to be put on lists that would allow them to cross into Egypt. Those with pending U.S. immigration cases or in the early stages of an application must already be out of Gaza in order to move forward in the process. 

The Biden administration says it does not control the crossing lists “nor determine who is permitted to depart Gaza or enter Egypt.” Immigration attorneys with Project IJP told Prism that the State Department must first make a request for a person’s name to be added to the Rafah crossing list, and Israeli and Egyptian officials then vet the person.

“Once the State Department submits those names, they kind of go into a black box. There’s no way to find out … when they’re actually going to be on the published list. Some people were able to get out quickly in the early days of the war. And now it’s really, really variable,” Akbar said. 

In a statement to Prism, a State Department spokesperson said the agency “has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas,” adding that the agency has assisted more than 1,600 U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, and their family members “with entry to Egypt from Gaza at the Rafah Border Crossing.”

“A U.S. Embassy team is present at the Egyptian facility at Rafah crossing daily,” the statement said. “Of course, the Rafah border crossing is located in a very difficult environment, particularly on the Gaza side, with ongoing hostilities and multiple checkpoints or obstacles to overcome before reaching the Egyptian immigration hall.”

Faris Abdulhadi came to the U.S. from Gaza in 1997 and is now a U.S. citizen. He is currently petitioning for his wife, Maram, who is a nurse in Gaza, to reunite with him and their children in Texas. The couple has an approved I-130 application—the form submitted to USCIS by U.S. citizens and green card holders to petition for an immediate relative who plans to migrate to the U.S. To move forward, Maram must appear for an interview at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, but she cannot attend the interview because she isn’t on an evacuation list. 

Abdulhadi says he has repeatedly followed up with the State Department, USCIS, both U.S. embassies in Jerusalem and Cairo, and his senators in Texas to no avail. Others in similar positions also say their repeated outreach is often ignored, or that they receive generic responses that don’t answer their specific questions. Prism reached out to USCIS for comment several times without response.

“Unfortunately, there seems to be a broken process because she has not been listed to leave,” Abdulhadi said. “Maram is an amazing lady … an educated, smart, hard-working individual. She’s looking forward to coming here and starting a new chapter of her life. I feel helpless in trying to help her achieve that.” 

Abdulhadi told Prism that a few weeks ago, Maram was detained for several hours by the Israeli army. She’s now in Rafah, where about 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering under the threat of a potential March 10 ground offensive by Israeli forces unless Hamas frees all remaining hostages. 

“[This] case is unique in that [Abdulhadi’s] spouse has no business still being in Gaza,” said Maria Kari, a Houston, Texas-based immigration attorney.

“If you don’t die from [the] bombardment, you will die from starvation, you will die from lack of medication, you will die from cold.”

Dina Abusamra

“It’s outrageous to me that he’s still having to beg for our government to recognize his spouse’s humanity,” Kari said. “This is part of the dehumanization and the critical disparity we’ve seen in the treatment of Palestinian Americans since the start of this war. You had Israeli Americans evacuated within the first weeks on cruise ships and charter jets. And you have Palestinian Americans who are still on the ground, and then you have immediate relatives who qualify under the State Department’s own guidelines, still stranded and asking for assistance. It’s a huge betrayal on part of the U.S. government. They’ve essentially ceded all control over the protection of these people … It’s inexcusable.”

Many attorneys share these frustrations and say there’s a pattern of discrimination against Palestinians fleeing Gaza. The response from the U.S. has been very different from its treatment of Ukrainian refugees displaced by Russia’s invasion. 

“What’s so unique about [the Uniting] for Ukraine [program] is that nobody had to ask for it,” said immigration attorney Amanda Gennerman, who’s working with Project IJP. “It was just created [by the Biden administration] and suddenly people were getting out of Ukraine.” A much more limited humanitarian parole program was also specifically created for nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Humanitarian parole fees were waived for the more than 170,000 Ukrainians granted temporary protection by the Biden administration, according to the State Department. The Uniting for Ukraine program also did not require U.S. sponsors to be family members or immediate relatives of Ukrainian applicants. Palestinians must pay $575 and file individual applications for each relative. One person is working with Al-Wardi to bring her brother’s six children to the U.S. after he and his wife were killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza. This adds up to nearly $4,000–and this is without any guarantee the parole applications will be approved. 

Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza has exterminated entire families at once—multiple generations gone, from great-grandparents to newborns. The forced evacuation of people from Gaza is an act that carries heavy grief and uncertainty. What were once beautiful homes, schools, hospitals, local markets, and vibrant streets are now blown-out structures and piles of rubble. Israel’s bombing and attacks have also burned and killed ancient olive trees. The Gaza seashores overlooking the Mediterranean, once a place for families to gather, are now used by Israeli soldiers to park tanks and bulldozers. For many Palestinians, leaving Gaza is about preserving life with the hope they’ll one day return to rebuild a Gaza that is free from Israel’s occupation.

“If you don’t die from [the] bombardment, you will die from starvation, you will die from lack of medication, you will die from cold,” said Dina Abusamra, a permanent legal resident of the U.S. whose father died in Gaza in November as she fought to get her family evacuated. 

Palestinians in the U.S. race to evacuate families from Gaza is a story from Prism, a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our work today.