Over 1,000 Afghan children evacuated to the US without their parents

During the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan over the summer and fast attempts to evacuate those that wanted to leave the country, over 1,000 Afghan children were evacuated to the US without their parents.

In recent figures CNN obtained from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, roughly 1,450 children were evacuated without their parents.

Advocates say that some of the children were separated from their parents as they were attempting to flee the country, while some may have lost contact with their families when the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul was bombed, with some of the parents being killed in the blast alongside 13 US military service members.

Officials reportedly said that a majority of the 1,450 children evacuated without their parents were released to sponsors in the US, which includes other family members they fled the country with or relatives that already lived in the United States.

Around 250 children though remain in US government custody, according to statistics the Office of Refugee Resettlement recently provided to CNN.

Most of those children have no family members residing in the US to reunite them with.

Some of these children have been able to connect with their families through video calls or connecting through WhatsApp, though the minors are still experiencing trauma from being in a foreign country, with family members telling them that they are not safe back in Afghanistan.

"They know where their parents are, and their parents are saying, 'We're not safe,' and they're trying to escape the Taliban. Between the fear of the unknown, and the fear of what they do know and can do nothing about, it's like a constant adverse childhood experience," said Nathan Bult,  Bethany Christian Services' senior vice president of public and government affairs.

Some of the children may experience difficulties being reunited due to paperwork that was filled with incorrect information when they were evacuated. According to CNN, some of the children's names and birth dates were filled in wrong.

The difficulties come months after President Joe Biden withdrew all US troops from Afghanistan, with the Taliban taking over the country.

For weeks nations moved quickly to evacuate as many as they could, though some were left behind when evacuations by the military were cut off at the end of August.