**If you are interested in financially contributing to help my family, please consider donating to Combined Arms SIVs and Allies Group to offset the costs associated with moving my family to the U.S. and starting our new life in Houston, Texas donate here**

I am the son of the late Mohammad*. The Taliban murdered my father on January 27, 2021, leaving my mother, my five siblings, and me grieving and fearful for our lives. My father helped the U.S. Mission in Afghanistan for over a decade. It was this work that put a target on his back and eventually cost him his life.

Losing a father is painful enough but what's even more cruel is that it didn't have to be that way. Over ten years ago my father applied for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), a visa that was designed to save families like mine, whose lives are at risk because of their work with the U.S. military. It took over a decade and the extensive help of lawyers to get my father approved to apply for the visa, all because the U.S. Government made a mistake. If the U.S. Government did not err nor delay in my father’s visa application, then he would still be alive, and my family would be safely living in the United States. Instead, my father is dead and my family is still under attack. Most recently, in February, the Taliban wrote us:

Your father was a spy, America’s puppet, and was working for them, and you saw the consequences, that we killed him. You are his son, and you are all spies. If you are caught, you all will end up dying as your father. Our fight will continue as you are the apostate. Down with the spies and puppets of America. God is great God is great God is great.

My family and I are currently in hiding, fearful of leaving our apartment. I know the Taliban will actualize their threats as they did to my father and other family members.

To ensure that my mother, siblings, and I escape the Taliban, lawyers at Touro Law School and the International Refugee Assistance Project have helped my family file a humanitarian parole petition. Our lives currently depend on the U.S. Government’s willingness to act and stand by its wartime allies. My father raised me to believe in the ideal that America stands for freedom and the fundamental value of human life. He died fighting for these truths. I still have faith that my father’s vision of America is true and America will act to save me and my family. Please sign this petition to encourage U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to grant us Humanitarian Parole and live up to its American ideals. 

For more information on my family’s situation and my father’s tragic death, please refer to the articles below: 

• We Can't Abandon Afghans Who Helped Us - The Atlantic, March 2021
• Afghan Interpreters Languish in Visa Limbo as US Coalitions Return Home - The World, March 2021