For six days, a man we’ll call Martín walked across a remote stretch of the Sonoran Desert between Mexico and southern Arizona with a guide and six other migrants. It was February 2023, and the nights were frighteningly cold. One morning, he awoke to the desert painted white—the first time he had seen snow. They walked and walked. It snowed again, and they kept walking—until Martín couldn’t walk anymore.

Three months earlier, the 23-year-old had left his home in Guatemala’s western highlands. A father of three, Martín (whose name has been changed to protect his identity) had never finished elementary school, and good jobs were hard to come by. So he did what so many others from his region have done: He headed north, hoping to cross the border undetected and find better opportunities in the United States.

Martín’s journey ended on a hillside in the Baboquivari Mountains, 26 miles north of the US-Mexico border. When he began suffering chest pains and stopped to rest, the group continued without him, leaving him with a gallon of water and no food. High on the mountain, his cellphone had enough service to call 911. He kept calling—11 times in total over the ensuing three days. But help never came from official channels—not from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, which has a team of search and rescue deputies, or the US Border Patrol, which has specialized search and rescue–trained agents. Instead, upward of 14 volunteers initiated a chaotic three-day mission to rescue Martín. In their multiple attempts to reach him through locked gates and terrain too punishing to navigate, one question kept surfacing: Why had the agencies tasked with rescue work along the world’s deadliest migration route failed to act? Why had they left this man to potentially die on a mountain?  

Martín’s case is just one example of how the search and rescue system in the borderlands often fails migrants caught up in the US’s decadeslong efforts to deter unauthorized migration. It is symptomatic of a scattershot emergency response system with little accountability, in which responsibility for saving migrants’ lives is divided among Border Patrol agents whose primary duty is law enforcement, not search and rescue; overtaxed county search and rescue teams; and unpaid volunteers from humanitarian groups who take it upon themselves to come to migrants’ aid when no one else will. The result is a system in which stranded migrants like Martín can fall through the cracks—sometimes with deadly consequences.

Migrants crossing the Southwest border have faced particularly perilous conditions since the 1990s, when the Border Patrol began implementing an immigration enforcement strategy known as “prevention through deterrence,” which closed off popular crossing points near urban ports of entry, pushing migrants into more remote parts of the Sonoran Desert. In theory, the harsh natural environment of the desert was supposed to discourage unauthorized migration. But instead of deterring migrants, these policies only made the journey more dangerous—a reality that even the Border Patrol could not ignore. From the mid-1990s, when the prevention through deterrence policies were implemented, to 2005, the number of migrant deaths approximately doubled, with the majority of the increase occurring in the Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona, sector, which includes a large swath of the Sonoran Desert.

The federal government created a search and rescue training program called BORSTAR in 1998. Since then, the Border Patrol has conducted thousands of rescues along the Southwest border: In 2022, agents rescued 22,075 people, up from 12,857 in 2021 and 5,336 in 2020. That increase partly reflects overall trends in migration—border crossings surged after 2020 in large part due to Title 42, a Trump administration policy that immediately expelled migrants seeking asylum at the border, prompting more repeat crossings. It also reflects improved search and rescue infrastructure in the borderlands: Cellphone coverage has expanded in some remote parts of the Sonoran Desert, and the Department of Homeland Security has invested more money into resources like rescue beacons and placards instructing migrants to call 911 if they are in trouble. Despite these investments, migrant deaths have remained high. The Border Patrol recorded 895 deaths along the Southwest border in 2022, compared with 568 in 2021 and 254 in 2020. Given that the Border Patrol has long struggled to collect complete data on migrant deaths, those numbers are likely a significant undercount.

Martín’s call for help came from a remote corner of Pima County, which sees the majority of migration-related distress calls in the Sonoran Desert, averaging four to five per day. Throughout the US, county sheriff’s offices are typically responsible for providing search and rescue services for anyone in their jurisdiction, a norm codified under Arizona state law. But unlike neighboring Cochise and Yuma counties, which respond directly to migrants calling in distress, dispatchers at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department refer all calls they suspect are migration-related to the Border Patrol—a practice that critics allege is discriminatory and results in an often-substandard emergency response.

Pima County has significant resources at its disposal to respond to those calls, including seven dedicated search and rescue deputies, the volunteer-run Southern Arizona Rescue Association, helicopters, infrared cameras, drones, and a trained canine team. But according to Deputy Adam Schoonover, a public information officer for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, the Border Patrol can respond faster to lost or injured migrants in remote parts of the borderlands. “It’s all about getting the person help as quickly as possible and that has many variables to it,” he said in an email, noting that the department’s search and rescue deputies often are out on a call and may be unavailable. “BORSTAR units can respond faster and are well equipped to handle calls for service in the border area.”

The data, however, often suggests otherwise. A recent investigation by Tanvi Misra for High Country News and Type Investigations found that of the 3,000 emergency calls handled by the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector in 2022, 38 were categorized as medical emergencies, but only six appeared to have triggered a search and rescue operation. Another 299 callers routed to the Border Patrol were never found.

In the absence of a reliable emergency response from local law enforcement and the Border Patrol, an informal network of volunteers with local nonprofits has for years been navigating the difficult and dangerous work of conducting search and rescue operations themselves.   

The call came at 1 p.m. to the hotline run by an Arizona humanitarian aid group: A man’s brother was stranded somewhere on the US side of the border and needed help. It was Martín’s brother calling. After Martín had called 911 and no one had come for him, he tried his brother, who lives in the US and knew about the hotline. The hotline dispatcher called the Border Patrol, as is the group’s protocol, and relayed the information about Martín, including his location. Hours later, the hotline dispatcher received another call from Martín’s brother. Martín was still out there, his brother said. “Didn’t you call Border Patrol? What’s going on?”

The dispatcher passed the case to the Frontera Aid Collective (FAC), another group that conducts search and rescue missions and water drops along the border. Taylor Leigh and Scott Eichling, two FAC volunteers, decided to mobilize immediately to try to rescue Martín. It was 9 p.m., and as Leigh got ready, she called the Border Patrol, “freaking out,” she said. Temperatures were already below freezing, and Martín had been out there for a night and a day.

As Leigh and Eichling loaded supplies into the FAC vehicle, Leigh was transferred five times to different Border Patrol stations. She finally reached an agent, who she said told her that the Border Patrol couldn’t do anything about Martín. Eichling called back and got the same response from that agent. He called again and said another dispatcher laughed at him.

Although the Border Patrol often touts the existence of BORSTAR and a more recent initiative called the Missing Migrant Program as proof of its commitment to providing search and rescue services, the reality is more nuanced. The agency’s Missing Migrant Program, which began in 2017, was responsible for installing the thousands of 911 signs and more than 170 emergency beacons along the border to facilitate rescues, but many migrants in distress are reluctant to use them until the situation is dire, knowing that contacting the Border Patrol will lead to arrest and deportation. Not only that, neither BORSTAR nor the Missing Migrant Program are independent entities with dedicated personnel to help migrants in distress.

Rather, the Missing Migrant Program is a set of protocols governing how the agency responds to 911 calls from migrants and families inquiring about loved ones who have gone missing while trying to cross the border. For instance, agents first check whether the missing person is in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, before instructing a family to call their consulate for more information (as agents are typically barred from providing direct information on specific cases to civilians).

Similarly, BORSTAR is not the equivalent of a dedicated search and rescue team, ready to mobilize for any emergency call. Rather, it is a relatively tiny initiative, employing roughly 300 agents spread out among the nine Border Patrol sectors along the Southwest border. Essentially, BORSTAR agents are regular Border Patrol agents with specialized training: They attend a five-week BORSTAR Academy, where they learn various search and rescue skills and become certified emergency medical technicians. Despite that training, they actually spend most of their time out in the field performing regular enforcement duties.

Calls from or about lost or injured migrants forwarded to the Border Patrol by 911 dispatchers or humanitarian groups are first categorized and assessed for their urgency, then forwarded to the local Border Patrol station with details like GPS coordinates or a last known location. Rescues—which the Border Patrol also conducts for lost or injured US citizens—are handled by individual stations and often are collaborative endeavors among BORSTAR agents, regular Border Patrol agents, and Air and Marine Operations, another branch of Customs and Border Protection that deploys the helicopters and small planes patrolling the Southwest border, which can also be used for search and rescue. Occasionally, the Border Patrol will also ask local officials for assistance.

“Unless you have family who’s advocating for you and is really good at calling a million people, you’re kind of screwed.”

According to Steven Davis, a former volunteer with Pima County’s Southern Arizona Rescue Association who now volunteers with the humanitarian group the Tucson Samaritans, the Border Patrol does, in theory, have more search and rescue resources than Pima County, particularly in the remote regions of the border where people tend to run into trouble. The problem, he said, is their response is hampered by a lack of personnel to conduct large ground searches. And the Border Patrol is seen primarily as a law enforcement organization. “People often won’t call until it’s too late,” he added.

Leigh echoed Davis’ observations. “Border Patrol is supposed to send out BORSTAR—or just whatever agents are in the field—to go help somebody,” she said. “But it seems like that doesn’t really happen very often or effectively. Unless you have family who’s advocating for you and is really good at calling a million people, you’re kind of screwed.”

I asked Robert Daniels, a public affairs specialist for the Border Patrol, how the agency decides whether to respond to someone in distress. He denied that the Border Patrol ever declines to initiate a rescue. “We don’t do that,” he said, emphasizing that no one deserves to die crossing the desert. “We don’t tell somebody that they’re too far away, that we can’t get to them. If we can’t get to them on the ground, then we’re going to fly.”

When Daniels did not respond to further calls and questions about Martín’s case, I reached out to another public affairs specialist, who spoke to me on background, reiterating that the Border Patrol will always respond to a call for help but that the agency does triage calls. If the person isn’t injured, has food and water, and is in no immediate danger from weather conditions, the Border Patrol might wait to initiate a rescue. “You’re not going to send agents up a mountain overnight in order to get somebody, or fly an aircraft into the mountains to get somebody, when they’re perfectly content and capable of being walked down the next morning,” the specialist said.                       

That night, Leigh and Eichling drove south on State Route 286, a lonely two-lane highway that leads to the border. As the darkened mass of the Baboquivaris blotted out the skyline ahead, the magnitude of what they’d set out to do began to set in. Leigh and Eichling turned down a ranch road, but they kept running into locked gates, blocking their way forward. It was past midnight and they were alone on private property, so they decided to turn back. Another rescue effort that night mounted by members of the Phoenix-based Abolitionists aid group, along with another FAC duo, also proved unsuccessful. Martín would spend his second night out in the cold.

In the morning, Leigh and Eichling set out again with two other FAC members, having finally identified a better route up the mountain where Martín lay. They reached a locked gate. A tense discussion ensued; one volunteer was nervous about trespassing and risking arrest. Kyle Richardson, another FAC member, was adamant they continue. “We’re not going to let this abstract law get in the way of saving him,” Richardson said. The group dismantled part of the gate to get through.

Soon, the road grew so rough that they had to abandon their vehicle and walk down the private ranch road. Past a creepy-looking abandoned cabin, they finally came to a cattle tank at the base of the canyon that led up to Martín. There, they saw a Border Patrol agent sitting in his truck.

Leigh explained what they were doing, and the agent pointed to the mountain in front of them. Martín, he said, was “just on the other side.”

“Why aren’t you going up to him?” Leigh asked. The agent told her that his orders were to stay put. According to the Border Patrol public affairs specialist I spoke with, Border Patrol dispatchers initially had trouble locating Martín, and it was dark by the time they were able to establish contact. “We determined that he was stable and didn’t need immediate evacuation,” the specialist said, before acknowledging that humanitarian aid groups and Martín’s family might not have agreed.

The group headed up the canyon. Between them and Martín lay 4 to 5 miles of dense brush and boulders. The terrain was so steep that at times they had to climb on their hands and knees. A helicopter whirred in the distance and they saw it approach, assuming it had come to rescue Martín. Instead, it hovered near the top of the mountain where they were aiming for 20 seconds and then flew away.

After five or six hours, they reached a grassy saddle between two peaks. They crawled under a barbed-wire fence and walked along the trail, calling Martín’s name. Finally, they heard him. A faint yell in the distance, and then again.

When they reached him, he was lying in the middle of a bare grassy hillside, extremely dehydrated and in the early stages of shock. Richardson was struck by how visible he was—his black faux leather jacket and personal belongings scattered around him stuck out vibrantly against the light green backdrop.

The mood was somber as they slowly made their way back down the steep canyon, Eichling piggybacking Martín when he grew too weak to walk. Martín and his family had scraped together the equivalent of about $16,000 to pay for the journey in the hope that he would make it to the US and find work. Instead, once they reached the Border Patrol agent at the bottom of the mountain, he would be deported.

In the year and a half since Martín’s rescue, volunteers in southern Arizona and along other parts of the border have continued to mount search and rescue operations for migrants, some of whom had called 911 and been transferred to the Border Patrol multiple times, but received no response. There was the woman who called for help deep in the Ironwood Forest National Monument, 25 miles northwest of Tucson. To try to find her, FAC volunteers drove on some of the worst roads they had seen in the middle of the night, far from cell service. She had moved, so they never found her, but two days later, workers on a ranch did. She was nearly dead, but they brought her to a hospital and she survived. And a few weeks after FAC rescued Martín, a 23-year-old woman, also from Guatemala, called for help from the Baboquivari Mountains. Like Martín, her family had called 911 with her exact coordinates more than 60 times, but according to Leigh, every time, the dispatcher would say, “Not Spanish,” and hang up. Frantic, the woman’s family called the hotline for help. When volunteers located the woman, she had already died.

It’s difficult to know how many cases like these never received a response. A report from another humanitarian group, No More Deaths, audited 911 calls in Pima County from June 2022 and found that of 64 emergency cases received by the county and transferred to the Border Patrol during that month, there were 17 in which the distressed person was never located. In at least 10 of those cases, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department took no further action upon learning that the Border Patrol had not found the 911 caller. 

“They have been tasked with stopping an ‘invasion’ at the border. In reality, they’re interacting with people who need basic aid, who need their asylum applications processed.”

The Border Patrol does not disclose how many emergency calls it receives or fails to act on, or the outcome of its search and rescue efforts. This lack of transparency and accountability in efforts to reduce migrant deaths has been well-documented for decades. In 2006, the federal government’s watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, issued a report that found that the Border Patrol’s efforts to reduce migrant deaths could not be fully evaluated due to insufficient data. The report also pointed out that the Border Patrol’s primary role as an enforcement agency often occurred simultaneously with its search and rescue activities, making it difficult to assess their efficacy. More recent GAO reports on the Missing Migrant Program have found that its recordkeeping on migrant deaths has long been incomplete and that Customs and Border Protection has not been transparent about disclosing those data limitations to Congress, though its data collection efforts have improved in recent years.  

Reece Jones, a political geographer at the University of Hawaii who has written extensively about the Border Patrol, attributes the agency’s unreliable response to migrants in distress to a disconnect between its mission and the actual needs it encounters at the border. “They have been tasked with stopping an ‘invasion’ at the border,” he said. “In reality, they’re interacting with people who need basic aid, who need their asylum applications processed.” In the years since 9/11, when the agency’s mission was reframed around terrorism, the Border Patrol has grown increasingly militarized, Jones said. That militarization has only exacerbated the conflict of interest between enforcing border policies and reducing the death toll created by those same policies. “The Border Patrol hired Rambo when they needed Mother Teresa,” Jones said, paraphrasing journalist Garrett Graff. “That’s essentially the problem that’s happened over the last 20 years.”

When I last spoke to Martín, he was back in his hometown, struggling to find a job. What he wants most, he told me, is the opportunity to buy a house and give his children a better future. After what happened to him, Martín has no immediate plans to cross the border again. But he has entertained other possibilities. He had heard that adults who arrive at the US-Mexico Border with their children to seek asylum, handing themselves over to the Border Patrol directly, faced an easier pathway into the United States. “Maybe it will be better with one of my children,” he told me. “Maybe I would do it.”

Last November, I drove with members of FAC along a section of the border wall near Sasabe, a town straddling the border. Hundreds of migrants—many of them young children—had been arriving there, climbing through holes in the wall or walking across the border where the wall ends. They would wait for hours and sometimes days for Border Patrol agents to pick them up so they could claim asylum, a legal right under US and international law. That day, we came across two groups of 100 people or more, waiting in the shade of the wall. Twenty-five-year-old Sharon Mishell Valderramos had traveled 20 days with her son, Esquin, a smiley 6-year-old wearing a tie-dye baseball cap. “The government doesn’t protect us,” she said, when I asked her why she had left. All she wanted was to work and for Esquin to get an education.

A few miles west of Sasabe, the border wall ends in a canyon known colloquially as Smuggler’s Canyon. No fence exists there, just trails crisscrossing an invisible line in the scrubby desert, where a child’s jacket hung from a bush next to the trail. I thought of how Martín had left open the possibility of another journey north, this time with his children, and what might happen if they needed help.

Editor’s note: One year after the slaughter of more than 1,200 people in Israel and taking of 254 hostages by Hamas on October 7, 2023—and the commencement of retaliatory strikes and invasions by Israel—the situation remains fraught. Gaza lies in rubble. The Gazan health ministry reports that Israel’s military activities have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians to date, including more than 11,000 children, and have wounded nearly 100,000. The true toll, when uncounted and indirect deaths are factored in, is likely far greater. Some 1.9 million people—about 90 percent of Gaza’s population—are displaced, and relatively few have made it out of the territory. This is the story of one family that did. The events described took place in February 2024. Owing to the uncertain legal status of the family members, who remain in Egypt, the names herein, and that of the author, are pseudonyms.

It’s nearing 9 p.m. by the time we finally agree on Papa John’s. Six pizzas for the 12 of us. Youssef calls in the order. At 16, he’s shed the sweet voice I remember from our calls to Gaza over the years. The total will be $16 at Cairo’s black market exchange rates. The manager calls back a minute later. For such a large amount, they will send someone to take a deposit. Youssef relays the message and someone translates. We laugh at the concept of a down payment on pizza.

My brother-in-law Kamal, Youssef’s father, walks in, and another plastic chair appears as we readjust our circle to accommodate him. My husband, Samer, and I have traveled halfway across the globe from California to help 10 family members—relatives I’m finally meeting in person after 25 years of marriage—settle temporarily in Egypt after escaping the devastation in Gaza.

They are here under precarious conditions—some of the more than 115,000 displaced Gazans in Egypt, many of whom managed to wrangle (and overstay) a 45-day tourist visa before Israel shut down the border. But despite their good fortune in escaping the war zone, they have no status outside of it. Neither refugee nor resident, they exist in a legal no-man’s land that prevents any of them from enrolling in school, getting a job, or securing health coverage.

Three family members remain trapped in Rafah—two of my husband’s brothers and one of their daughters. They are everyone’s priority right now. Our seats spill out of the cramped living room into the hall, entranceway, and kitchen of the basic, hastily rented apartment. It doesn’t compare to the three high-rise units in Gaza City the families had to flee, but it is worlds better than their other stops along the refugee railway—sleeping on the floor of their pharmacy supply business, which the Israelis later blew up, and then at the house of a cousin in Rafah shared with 40 others.

Everyone is acutely aware of the hour as we chat about our day, cellphones heavy in our hands. Papa John’s calls back to apologize. It won’t require a deposit after all. The rules always seem to be shifting here. Indeed, why one child was denied exit while six others were not is yet another nonsensical piece of a broader, even more nonsensical puzzle.

 

Israeli forces commenced bombing in Gaza on October 9, 2023.

Five days later, Gaza City residents were told to evacuate.

About a quarter of all structures have been destroyed, per the UN, and two-thirds damaged.

 

Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty

My husband and I came to Egypt to do whatever we can to help. And tonight, like so many families in Gaza or Cairo, across Europe and the United States, we are awaiting the Daily List. Thousands of families are trying desperately to get loved ones out of Gaza, though relatively few are successful. The list of people approved for exit by the Egyptian border authority—no more than 250 names a day, a mere trickle—appears on Rafah News, a privately maintained Facebook page that is updated nightly. The family members in Rafah await our call. With no reliable internet, they depend on the diaspora for news of their fate.

All at once, everyone’s phones start pinging with alerts from their social networks, and all heads bow to scour the list. Our Egyptian fixer has assured us that the names will be on it tonight, “100 percent.” This is the sixth day of such assurances, for which my husband and I have paid $21,000. That would buy 7,894 Papa John’s pizzas in Cairo.

Mona, 17, flicks her index finger on her screen, seeking the names of her father, sister, and uncle. She was with them a month ago when her own name appeared on the list. From the comfort of our home in San Francisco, my husband—as the eldest, the de facto patriarch—made the decision on his brother’s behalf: She would be safer risking the journey alone than staying in Gaza. And so Mona was sent by herself across the border, across the Sinai Peninsula.

Tonight, from the group’s downcast eyes, the huddle of their shoulders, no translation is needed. The names are not there.

I had tried to convince my husband that I wasn’t needed on this trip. I don’t speak Arabic and I’d never met his Gazan family. I’d be a woman in Egypt, with little to offer but my patently American optimism. But Samer insisted I was needed for “moral support.”

In Cairo, he assigns me “aunt duty.” My job is to spend time with our nieces, assess them for trauma, and begin to get to know them.

On a Monday, Yasmine, 19, is the first to arrive at our hotel for some one-on-one time. Her mother had said the teen was having trouble sleeping, so I decide yoga might help. I’m no guru, but I know my way around the yoga app on my iPad. One of the routines is set to the music of Queen, but Yasmine has never heard of the band—nor Taylor Swift. Little Mermaid yoga draws a blank, as do the Beatles, so I give up and select a classic rock theme. We find an open studio in the hotel fitness center and lock the door so she can remove her hijab.

I make small talk as I load the class onto my device, remarking how pretty Yasmine is and asking when she’ll get her braces off. She doesn’t know, she says. Her orthodontist is dead, she tells me. Her uncle, too. One day, her cousins, also still in Gaza, were parched, and their father had gone out looking for potable water—snipers shot him in the head. A week later, her grandfather died of a stroke because no hospital had the capacity to take him. I yearn to know more—about others she’s lost and what it’s like for someone so young to endure such brutal circumstances—but I refrain.

The next morning, Yasmine tells me she slept eight hours for the first time in months. I give her my favorite pen and tell her to keep writing in her journal.

Every day, I pluck one or two of my six nieces from their monotony and uncertainty to enjoy a day out with Aunt Allie. Today is Tuesday, and my task is to bring Samira to try a gym where we’ve offered to buy the girls a membership. They desperately need things to do. A month earlier, the last of Gaza’s 12 universities had been destroyed in what the UN has termed a “scholasticide.” Samira has been spending the days of what should be her sophomore year in Cairo, watching endless YouTube videos.

Samira is also 19, and her skittish persona emerges in nearly inaudible whispers. When she does volunteer conversation, her English is excruciatingly halting. Its very simplicity seems to evoke an almost savant-like deeper meaning: “Does Zane ask how we are?”

Zane is my 19-year-old son, her elder cousin by a mere 41 days. The juxtaposition of her life of deprivation with his life of peace and abundance couldn’t be more striking. Samira has lived through four wars and the countless daily indignities Americans rarely hear about—like the Israeli blockades that result in shortages of basics such as clothing fabrics, pens, spices, and toothbrushes; the youth unemployment rate of up to 75 percent; and the throttled electricity, available only about 10 hours a day even prior to the hostilities.

“Does he know us?” Samira’s tone is meek, as though she’s talking to herself, but her persistence signals a certain determination: “Does he know my name?”

I realize she is only inquiring about her cousin, cocooned away at a small liberal arts college in New England, but something in her simple poetry evokes something broader: Despite Gaza’s moment as a global cause célèbre—the hastily produced kaffiyehs, protest encampments, and solidarity marches—much of the world exhibits little interest in learning what a typical childhood in Gaza is like. As Samira might put it, “Do they know about us?”

It was 2 a.m. in Rafah and Israeli bombs were falling. Tamir wanted his big brother on the line. I gripped Samer’s hand as we listened to sounds of destruction over his cellphone speaker.

My husband had warned me about the Islamic dress codes, but the lightest long pants I own—a pair of cargo tights—aren’t nearly light enough for the gym’s 80-degree heat. They do, however, have side pockets perfect for carrying the stacks of $100 bills we brought to Cairo, where everything revolves around wads of cash. In a dark parking lot, we swapped our Benjamins for a backpack full of Egyptian pounds, which we emptied at one point onto the apartment’s coffee table, bringing to mind Scrooge McDuck or a B-movie drug deal.

I dispatch some of the pounds on a personal training session for Samira and a short-sleeve shirt to replace her heavy sweatshirt. She’s never been on a treadmill. I recall her saying she missed Gaza’s beaches, so I ask the trainer to put on a beach-themed background video. The beaches aren’t the only thing she is missing. Her twin sister, Amal, is one of the three relatives who remains in Gaza. The sisters have been separated for over three months. How or why or who decides, we have no idea.  

Later, after a shower, changing back into our street clothes, Samira realizes she’s forgotten her brush. She looks at me in utter confusion and asks what to do. I fish a ponytail holder out of my bag and hand it to her. In the few days I’ve known her, I’ve found her often in moments like this, lost and frozen, utterly overwhelmed—perplexed by her circumstances and, I suspect, all she has been through. She can’t grasp my suggestion of a quick finger brush. She asks if I will buy her a new one. I leave and return minutes later with a two-pack. “One is for Amal,” I tell her.

“I feel happy just hearing her name,” Samira says.

As we exit the gym, the shops in the adjacent mall are putting out special goods and decorations for Ramadan. I consider an advent-like calendar with flavored dates behind perforated cardboard doors. Twenty-four days until Ramadan. I wonder if Samira is counting them down.

A member of Israel’s war cabinet had promised that Rafah would be invaded if the remaining hostages weren’t freed by the start of the Muslim holy month. (The invasion ultimately would commence May 6, some two and a half months later.) Back in California, we’d had a preview of what that might look like. Tamir, one of my husband’s brothers, had called just as we were about to set out on a pretrip shopping expedition. It was 2 a.m. in Rafah and Israeli bombs were falling. Tamir wanted his big brother on the line. I gripped Samer’s hand as we listened to sounds of destruction coming over the cellphone speaker.

The dialogue was sparse: “Did you hear that?”

“Something has fallen in the yard in front of the house.”

“The windows have all shattered.”

At some point, Tamir said his throat was dry from the dust—and fear. “Can you stay on the line with Amal while I go look for a drink?” he said.

I was grateful the conversation was in Arabic, as I wouldn’t have known quite what to say to his teenage daughter. Samer kept asking her questions that felt absurd, given the situation: “How are you?” “Are you still there?” Amal replied she was “fine,” as though exchanging pleasantries with an acquaintance at the supermarket.

We had an oversized suitcase back at home waiting to be loaded with shoes, winter coats, and T-shirts with random slogans, so we took the call on the road. By the time we arrived at the store, the apocalyptic soundtrack had receded, and Tamir traded the comfort of our voices for an attempt at sleep.

Back in Cairo, after our workout, Samira and I join the other nieces for lunch. I suggest McDonald’s, which doesn’t exist in Gaza—a golden arches meal is practically a bucket-list item for kids there. I realize I’m being provocative. Given the US military support for Israel, some Egyptians have boycotted American franchises, and many of the displaced Gazans have joined them.

Just as US businesses showed support for Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s onslaught, so businesses in Cairo have incorporated the Gazan cause into their marketing. Palestinian flags adorn takeout coffee cups and storefronts. Our Papa John’s pizza boxes have stickers reading, “Fresh,” atop a silhouette of historic Palestine, which encompasses most of Israel in addition to Gaza and the West Bank.

The sticker makes me uneasy, as I grew up supporting Israel’s right to exist and defend itself. But that support obviously does not stretch to the eradication of my lunch companions—or Lebanese civilians or anyone else just trying to live their lives. One would be hard pressed to create a sticker that accurately depicts today’s Palestinian territory. The Gaza Strip is a speck on the sea. The West Bank, a 90-minute drive to the northeast, resembles a piece of Swiss cheese—a pocket of enclaves picked apart by an expanding cycle of illegal Israeli settlements and the buffer zones set up to protect them. Between the two lies the inaccessible state of Israel.

We settle on an outdoor restaurant where I entertain the girls by ordering in Arabic. A commercial airliner flies overhead, and Laila nudges Noura to look up, as though she’s just spotted a double rainbow. Laila is 17, Noura, 12. In Gaza, they only ever saw military jets—even during times of relative peace.

The girls ask me endless questions: Do I like hummus? Why don’t I eat meat? Have I ever seen snow? Where will they go after Egypt? I stick to the short term, reminding them that our priority now is on getting everyone safely out of Gaza: “After that, when your fathers get here, we will talk as a family.”

The reality is that everything they know has been shattered—literally, fragments of cinder and glass strewn across the trappings of their childhoods. The circumstances may call for optimism, but they want to know what is next. For now, I can only offer the girls our financial support, do desperate Google searches for “countries accepting Gazan refugees” (answer: none), and insist that they order dessert.

Still, the afternoon at the mall boosts our spirits, and we bring a sense of optimism back to our nightly chair circle—hope amid despair. The fixer has upped his “100 percent assurance” with a confident promise of “a million dollars” if the names don’t appear tonight. We’ve extended our stay until the weekend, but I feel in my bones that this is the day.

It’s Wednesday now, and I’m taking Laila and Noura on an outing to distract them from the reality of yet another day estranged from their father. Neither the names nor the million dollars made an appearance last night.

The girls come to meet me at our hotel and can’t stop craning their heads around. They’ve never been in a hotel. I watch as they take selfies, the charcoal black of their French braids a perfect contrast to the ornate lobby’s white marble. Laila, who is perpetually smiling, wears a sweatshirt with “So Happy to Be Here” written across the chest.

Between Israeli “security” measures and extremist Islamic censorship, the nieces also grew up without movie theaters. It’s as though the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas have colluded to deprive Gazan kids of the simplest pleasures. The girls and I have pinky sworn that I will get to have the honor of taking them to their first silver screen experience, but a secondary promise has us agreeing to wait for Amal. So today, we’re headed back to the shopping mall.

Like actors playing people in normal circumstances, we chat about fashion. “We can’t wear short skirts because we are Muslim,” says big sister Laila, who tends to speak for the two of them. I ask them why they don’t wear headscarves. The girls wrinkle their noses in distaste. “In the public schools, we’re required to wear hijab, so we begged our parents to send us to private school.”

Noura bobs her head in agreement. Laila gestures to her own jeans and sweatshirt, modest yet fashionable. She could pass for one of my son’s California friends. “In Gaza, people sometimes look at us funny because of how we dress.”

Western dress can be considered quite rebellious in Gaza. “Here, in Egypt, no one cares!” Laila’s smile could melt mountains of the snow she’s never seen. Noura nods emphatically, echoing the sentiment.

At H&M, Laila beelines toward a tight, short dress. Her eyes go wide as she asks whether she can try it on, and we giggle as she admires herself in the sanctity of the dressing room. Noura dons a more conservative sweater. Absent of her baggy sweatshirt, I notice her sagging jeans and protruding ribs. “We all lost weight in Rafah,” Laila explains casually. “There wasn’t enough to eat.”

In the third or fourth store, maybe the fifth, Laila spots a navy-striped sweater: “I had one just like this at home.”

She’d shown me “home” the day before. A neighbor’s video walkthrough revealed exterior walls with cavernous openings, carpets of shattered glass, and belongings heaped in piles amid the wreckage. Next to Laila’s neatly made-up bed stood a blown-open wardrobe, a stuffed Sesame Street Ernie hanging from its door handle. I watched her watch the footage of a bedroom she would never see again. Miraculously, she was still smiling, dimples as deep as the craters in the walls of her room.

I offer to buy her the navy-striped sweater, but she politely declines. She does accept a multipack of earrings. We pick out an extra pack for Amal, hopeful that her name will make tonight’s list.

It does not.

Back at the hotel, the turndown service has left my husband and me a three-tiered silver cake stand overflowing with bite-sized pieces of baklava, petits fours, and macarons. We call the airline and push our departure back another two days, even though we’ve mostly resigned ourselves to leaving without getting Tamir, Nabil, and Amal to safety. Hope is an aberration in the deserts of Gaza.

I try to imagine what Amal is doing. I know she’s in a house with perhaps 30 others, windows long shattered, but at least they have four walls and a roof. The food is ample, but canned. Water is sparse. I also know the border is tantalizingly visible from that roof—so close that an Egyptian SIM card allows her to message her sisters in Cairo.

It’s Thursday and I’m killing time with Yasmine and her mother at the apartment.

As the 9 o’clock hour nears, the rest of the family joins us. We’re nibbling nervously at a mound of dolmas when I see Mona’s head bend toward her phone. A former neighbor has sent over a copy of the Daily List via WhatsApp. All three names are on it!

There is no dancing, whooping, or jubilatory squealing. It’s as though we have opened a small crack for our pent-up tension to escape slowly, like air from an improperly knotted balloon. Quiet, broad smiles emerge on our faces. Relief proves stronger than jubilation.

Displaced Gazans wait at the border crossing between Rafah and Egypt in November 2023.

Israel shut down the crossing in May 2024.

Abed Rahim Khatib/DPA/ZUMA

The trio’s journey from Gaza to Cairo is arduous but uneventful. We follow their progress via incoming texts.

      In line on Gaza side.

      Through Rafah gate.

      In departure hall.

      In line for bus.

      On bus to Egyptian side.

      In line at arrival hall.

      Crossed to Egyptian side.

      In line for bus.

      Crossing Sinai.

Their 200-mile trip takes nearly as long as our 7,500-mile flight from San Francisco. My husband and I have decided to give each family subunit the freedom to reunite in private. We spend the day making arrangements for our return and setting up a GoFundMe page to help defray our fixer costs and cover the families’ living expenses for the next six months to a year.

Some friends of ours who are GoFundMe veterans have advised us to put lots of specifics in the postings, but there are few to be had: Everything from schools to housing, even the question of whether our relatives can be technically classified as refugees, is up in the air, and it all could take months or years to sort out—if it’s even sortable. No nation has yet embraced the fleeing Gazans. When I inquire with a refugee agency about a US family reunification visa for my brothers-in-law (not even including their families), I am informed me that the average wait time is 15 to 20 years.

On Saturday morning, Tamir, Nabil, and Amal, our new arrivals, come to visit at our hotel. I stand on tiptoes to hug Nabil, who is 6-foot-7. I bend down for Amal. Born with severe scoliosis, she’s barely 5 feet tall, and my arms overlap around her tiny frame. I’m three times her 19 years and yet, given what she has been through, I feel humbled in her presence. My words feel clichéd: “It’s so, so good to see you! I’m so sorry this took so long.”

“I’m the one with the black-sheep bad luck in the family,” she says. Her nose crinkles when she laughs, and her eyes sparkle with mischief.

We escort the trio down the hotel’s imperial staircase for an expansive breakfast buffet. My brothers-in-law pile their plates high with a potpourri of cheeses—cheese and eggs, they say, are the foods they missed the most. Servers circle the room with drink refills and fresh bread, and the contrast of the scene with their existence in Rafah just 24 hours before is as ludicrous as it sounds.

Standing at an omelet station, Tamir apologizes for his hastily purchased sweatshirt, explaining that he hadn’t changed his clothes in 90 days. Six feet away, Amal is practically frozen by all the food choices. I wonder aloud what it must have been like for her to wear the same thing for so long. Tamir dismisses me with a smirk. Amal, he says, organized an exchange with other teens in the house—they traded “new” clothes constantly.

Today will be her day for pampering. I clumsily offer a variety of options, punctuating each with, “but I understand if it might feel like too much for you.”

“I’m up for everything!” she assures me, downing her third glass of juice.

I suggest another shopping trip—a practical choice, as her suitcase of cherished possessions was lost in the chaos of war. “I’ve decided I’m going to reinvent myself,” Amal declares, now onto a fourth juice. Her optimism is surreal, almost unsettling. I’d half-expected to meet a girl traumatized, hysterical, dirty—lacking hope. Instead, she smells of soap. I’m infected by her radiance, humbled by her resilience. She can’t wait to return to her college studies, she tells me, and she dreams of being an embryologist.

At the mall, we meet up with Samira, her twin. I’ve brought along so much Egyptian cash today that I can barely zip my fanny pack. But Amal is again overwhelmed by possibilities. After multiple loops around the mall, Samira points out that her sister’s hands are cracked and dry from her months in Rafah. Minutes later, we are testing body lotions and scents.

Amal’s thirst resurfaces and she asks me if we can grab a coffee. I hesitate to suggest Starbucks—which is just around the corner, but she spots the sign and shushes Samira’s boycott-busting hesitation with a “Don’t be ridiculous!” She grabs her twin by the hand, leads her through the door, and orders each a caramel macchiato.

The night before my husband and I head home, I finally introduce all six nieces to the joy of cinema. I go full throttle, buying each a bucket of popcorn, a box of candy, and a slushie. The girls are captivated by Madame Web, oblivious to the nearly deserted theater and the film’s 11 percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Watching their rapt faces, I think about how complex their lives have been, and how surprising their multidimensionality. The way they crave opportunity, not pity. How I came here intent on rescuing them, and instead, I fell in love.

It’s dusk as we leave the theater, the setting sun a gradient of purples, oranges, and pinks—like the colors of Amal’s ruined bedroom. We snap more pictures as she holds aloft the shopping bags with the costumes of her reinvention.

She pulls me close, conspiratorially, her tongue dyed bright blue from the slushie. “This wasn’t how I had hoped it would happen,” she confesses. “But I told you I would get out of Gaza!”

On September 24, ProPublica revealed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly ignored two different reports from within the Biden administration concluding that Israel was deliberately blocking aid into Gaza. Only days after receiving detailed memos explaining exactly how the Israeli military was blocking humanitarian aid, Blinken told Congress that US does not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance.”

Now, the Secretary of State is facing calls for his resignation. “[Blinken] lied. People went hungry, and some died. He needs to resign now,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) wrote this morning. Tlaib, who is the only Palestinian-American in the US House, is the first member of Congress to call for Blinken to resign. 

Blinken has not, as of the time of publication, responded to Tlaib’s comment. He justified his response to the reports on CBS this morning, saying his response was “actually pretty typical.”

The US government is legally required to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration each gave reports to Blinken concluding that Israel was deliberately blocking aid from the starving people of Gaza.

“USAID had sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct,” ProPublica reported. “The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.”

As recently as August, the US approved a $20 billion sale of weapons to Israel, including fighter jets, tank shells, and missiles.