Update to this story. Most of the other countries coordinated efforts to evacuate their own people, but we apparently left about 400 stranded with no practical support.
NEW YORK — In the days after Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes on Yemen two weeks ago, U.S. citizens watched as diplomats, aid workers and foreign nationals from other countries were evacuated by air and sea. They felt abandoned.
Many spent days calling consulates and the State Department but what they repeatedly heard was this: “There are no plans for a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of U.S. citizens at this time.” Activists and lawyers in California even created a website, stuckinyemen.com to help those left behind. They say more than 400 Americans have said they are stuck in Yemen and can’t find a way out.
Now, two groups that advocate for the civil rights of Arab Americans and American Muslims — the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — say they are filing a lawsuit on behalf of 41 U.S. citizens or permanent residents against Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, questioning the government’s failure to evacuate U.S. citizens trapped in Yemen.
It is unclear if the lawsuit has a chance of succeeding, but the groups say they are challenging “the constitutionality of the United States government’s action and/or failure to act to protect United States citizens in Yemen, whose lives are in danger from ongoing military action and violent attacks.”
The State Department has issued travel warnings against citizens visiting Yemen for years now. In February, it closed the embassy in Sana’a, citing “terrorist activities and civil unrest.” Yemen has long seen violence, partly the result of a powerful al-Qaeda branch, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Now in the midst of a Saudi-led campaign to dislodge Huthi rebels, they have captured strategic parts of the country.But some U.S. citizens chose to travel there, often for family reasons.
U.S. citizens say the State Department gave them almost no practical advice on how to leave, though they were told they could send messages to their loved ones through the State Department’s website.
More shocking, some say, is the email they received last Sunday from the State Department advising Americans stuck in Yemen that they could find their own way out of the country — by taking boats to Djibouti. The subject header of the e-mail was: Djibouti Travel Message.