By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) – Officials at a school said Tuesday that the last few Afghan refugees who settled near San Diego but were trapped there during the August Taliban invasion had made it out safely.

According to Howard Shen, a district spokesperson, the last stranded family, which consisted of four Cajon Valley Union Schools District students and their mother, made it to Kabul, Afghanistan capital. They then flew to Doha in Qatar.

According to him, the Taliban quickly seized power in August and the Taliban remained there since then. He claimed that the Taliban had provided “lots of assistance” but declined to give details about the means by which they left Afghanistan.

The school district is located in El Cajon suburb, San Diego. It stated that the family was helped by government officials and various aid agencies.

According to the statement, school district liaisons worked with Darrell Issa (a Republican) to arrange exits for other 19 immigrant students trapped in Afghanistan during their vacations.

A few hundred students are from Afghanistan, which accounts for about a third of the 17,000 enrolled at Cajon Valley schools.

Officials in district said that such families could have seen the summer 2021 to be their best opportunity to make a safe return trip to Afghanistan. But they ended up trapped in the chaos and fall of the Afghan government.

Superintendent of San Juan School District Sacramento County said that nine Afghan refugee families made up of 24 students are still in Afghanistan and need to be rescued.

In the few weeks following the Taliban overthrow, more than 114,000 civilians were evacuated from Kabul by an American airlift.

A group of thirteen U.S. Senators (all Democrats) wrote to President Joe Biden late last month, asking him to nominate a White House official as well as a Special State Department Envoy. This would help to concentrate efforts on securing safe passage for the “tens or thousands” of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers.