Americans stuck in the Middle East recount finding their way home with little government help

Alyssa Ramos’ evacuation from Kuwait involved a 48-hour journey across four continents. The U.S. government did not help with any of it, the travel blogger said.

“They keep going on the news and saying they’re doing everything they can to get Americans out,” Ramos said after landing in Miami on Thursday. “I know for a fact they’re not.”

She said she repeatedly messaged the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and was directed to the consular section, which told her it couldn’t help her leave the country and that she should enroll in the U.S.’s smart traveler program and shelter in place.

Ramos is one of the many Americans and citizens of other countries who evacuated from the Middle East or were still stranded there Friday, almost a week after Israeli-U.S. attacks on Iran rapidly entangled more than a dozen nearby countries. U.S. citizens described frustrations and growing fear as they encountered closed airports, canceled flights and alarming U.S. government guidance while Poland, Australia, France and other countries more quickly dispatched military or chartered planes to bring their citizens home.

“Having the State Department or whoever tell us, you need to get out immediately, well, but there’s no help. So you’re on your own to get your own travel plans. That was the most stressful thing,” Chicago resident Susan Daley said after arriving Thursday on the first commercial flight from Dubai to San Francisco since the Iran war began on Feb. 28. Daley had been on a work trip in the United Arab Emirates.

President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed back against criticism that the U.S. response was too slow.

The U.S. State Department said the first government-chartered repatriation flight made it back from the Mideast on Thursday and that more would arrive daily. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were on the planes or where in the Middle East they had departed from. The department says as of Thursday, it has “directly assisted” 10,000 citizens in the region seeking help or information.

A social media post from the assistant secretary of state for public affairs included a photo of Americans boarding a chartered emblazoned with the logo of the NFL’s New England Patriots. The plane is believed to be at least the second such flight to land at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.

As of Thursday, about 20,000 Americans had returned safely to the U.S. since the war started, the State Department said Thursday. U.S. embassies in the region continued to direct Americans to rely on commercial flights to leave, although much of the airspace across the Gulf remained closed or heavily restricted.

In the absence of advice from Washington or U.S. consular offices, some travelers said they turned to WhatsApp group chats and crowdsourced tips on social media for leads on commercial flights and alternative routes out of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and other countries. Some set up GoFundMe campaigns to help cover hotel and other expenses from days spent stuck in Dubai and other Gulf cities.

Chat groups help people evacuating

Ramos started WhatsApp group chats Monday to help people following her difficult evacuation via her social media account, “My Life’s a Travel Movie,” and messaging her that they needed help getting out, too.

In three days, more than 2,200 people joined the chats about leaving Dubai, Doha, Qatar, and Kuwait. Members organized shared rides to airports where flights were still operating, passed along names of trusted drivers and listed prices and even types of currency accepted.

On Thursday, a member wrote that her husband and two children have been trying to get out of Dubai but had two flights canceled and that her 2-year-old, who is diabetic, was running out of medication. Other members immediately jumped in to offer advice.

Jason Altmire, a former three-term Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, made it out of Dubai after the UAE partially reopened its airspace and Emirates airline resumed limited flights.

“We never heard anything from the State Department other than the general email advising us to find our own way out,” Altmire said in an email interview. “I found this, along with the ‘you’re on your own’ State Department voicemail, to be infuriating.”

Democratic lawmakers call US response ‘unacceptable’

In a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Democrats in Congress said that “the lack of clear preparation, planning, and communication to Americans abroad is unacceptable and a violation of the State Department’s basic mission to provide consular assistance and the protection of U.S. citizens overseas.”

Rubio said Tuesday that the U.S. had organized recovery flights but officials faced challenges due to airspace closures.

“We know that we’re going to be able to help them,” he said, while cautioning that “it’s going to take a little time because we don’t control the airspace closures.”

American Cory McKane, stranded in Dubai, managed to catch a flight out of the region Wednesday after a long, sleepless and expensive journey to Muscat, Oman.

Rather than risk being caught up at the crowded airport in Dubai, McKane and his friends rented a car and drove to the Oman border. There, he said, taxi drivers were charging as much as $650 to take stranded travelers to Muscat’s airport, where flights are still operating.

McKane said he was fortunate to have knowledgeable local friends and that stranded travelers created a WhatsApp group to share tips and advice.

“Everyone’s been sending each other resources because, quite frankly, the U.S. has not done a single thing in any capacity. That’s been really disappointing,” McKane said.

Commercial flight options are increase slowly

Commercial flight options have been limited since the start of the war. More than 29,000 of roughly 51,000 flights scheduled in or out of Middle East airports were canceled as of Friday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Oman, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have emerged as key exit points for repatriation flights because flights are still operating in those countries. Airspace over Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Syria, however, remained closed, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24.

Azerbaijan closed the southern sector of its airspace Thursday, after it accused Iran of a drone attack on its territory that injured four civilians and damaged an airport building.

Trenten Higgins, who took a taxi from Israel to Jordan, was able to fly out of its capital and get to New York on Thursday. He said the State Department wasn’t helpful.

“Every alert that they gave and all the advice they gave was a day at least too late,” he said. “Even when it wasn’t too late, it was impossible to act upon and then they would just hang up.”

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Associated Press reporters Wyatte Grantham-Philips and David Martin in New York, Haven Daley in San Francisco, Matthew Lee in Washington and R.J. Rico in Atlanta contributed to this report.