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 c