A United States citizen abandoned in Afghanistan gave an emotional account of how the State Department failed to aid her in leaving the country as the Taliban took control.
Jen Wilson is the head operating officer of the Army Week Association, a charitable organization established to make veterans’ transition from military service easier. Since the United States evacuation from Afghanistan in August, Wilson has been centered on saving American citizens and United States allies while working for Project Dynamo, a civilian organization to withdraw “eligible parties out of Afghanistan.”
While looking for Americans to withdraw out of Afghanistan, she found a woman named “Julie.”
On Friday, Wilson went on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” to share Julie’s story.
“I kind of run the ground-ropes in America,” Wilson told host Dana Perino. “Part of that role is going through the database and vetting who is requesting evacuation.”
“Right now, obviously, we are only able to evacuate Americans and NATO passport holders,” she explained. “So, my call list is about 500 Americans, NATO and their family members.”
“It was in those vetting calls that I found Julie,” Wilson continued. “I called up, basically just to say ‘are you an American?’ She told me her story and it broke me.”
Julie, who has supposedly been a U.S. citizen for around sixteen years, called into the cable news program to clarify how she has been abandoned in Afghanistan.
Perino asked Julie what the State Department advised her to do in order to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, to which she responded , “I am not doing anything. I’m just sitting on a hill.”
“They broke me. The United States broke me, because I am U.S. citizen,” the woman stated , and then begun to cry.
“And first … you know, I’ve been through a lot of — very bad in my life. I see, you know, I just come to get married here, to have life with my family and get back there,” she said. “The Taliban come in and everything is changing, and make my life as, I basically, I died, but I still alive. I don’t know.”
Julie said Jen is her “best lifeline,” and she was unable to depend on President Joe Biden’s State Department.
“The State [Department], I call them so many times,” Julie alleged. “I email them, they just take the phone, they say, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t do anything for you.’ And that is the answer. And I said what’s going on with you guys? I’m a U.S. citizen who [inaudible] United States. I just lose a lot of family.”
Wilson discovered that Julie got a letter from the State Department disclosing to her that they would be able to get withdrawn out of Afghanistan through the airport in Kabul. Unfortunately, Julie is said to have lost eighteen members of her family in the suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport that killed thirteen United States service members and 169 Afghans.
Around one hundred U.S. citizens who want to get away from Afghanistan are still in the country as of a couple weeks ago, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during congressional testimony last week.
Prior to the U.S. evacuation deadline, Biden pledged to evacuate all American citizens out of Afghanistan. “We will get you home,” Biden promised on Aug. 20.