For the last three months, daily life for Ace has been plodding and repetitive: Wake up, shower, exercise, read, maybe play some volleyball. And wait.

He tries to keep up with his bills back home in Riverside, Calif., but he lost his job as an auto-finance manager months ago. His wife is pregnant. With a baby on the way, Ace gets anxious watching his bank account dwindle as he passes the days in what he calls "jail."

But Ace isn't actually in a jail. He hasn't committed any crime. Rather, he's one of the thousands of people who fled Afghanistan last year who are being held in International Humanitarian City, a compound or aid hub in the United Arab Emirates. While evacuations from Afghanistan slowed to a crawl late last year, thousands of previous evacuees are still in Humanitarian City, waiting to be processed so they can be relocated to another country.

Ace, 33, and his wife, 24, flew out of Afghanistan on October 17, and they have been stuck ever since.

Ace was born and raised in Kabul, but unlike most of the other people in the compound, he is an American citizen. National Review agreed to identify him only by his nickname out of concern for family members who remain in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

Technically, Ace could have left the compound weeks ago, but that would have required leaving behind his wife, whose immigration status is still in limbo three years after their marriage.

"They offered me that," Ace said of an opportunity to leave alone. "I was like, 'No.' How could I leave my wife there?" Instead, he and his wife are waiting for an opportunity to leave together.

Ace said he is "frustrated and pissed off sometimes" by the treatment. American advocates who have worked to get the couple on a flight into the U.S. said it is "disgusting" and "criminal" that, nearly five months after the Biden administration's bungled evacuation from Afghanistan, an American citizen and his wife, along with others who should have been on the fast track to the U.S., are still trapped overseas. U.S. Department of State leaders say they remain committed to the "around the clock" mission of relocating U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and Afghans "to whom we have a special commitment."

In an email to National Review, a State Department spokesman declined to comment on Ace's case or other specific cases, because of "privacy considerations." The U.S. is working with the UAE government on a "range of complicated policies and operations" related to evacuees who remain at Humanitarian City, according to the email.

"We continue to work diligently to facilitate the relocation of all eligible individuals to the United States," the State Department spokesperson said. "The pace of relocation flights has been adjusted to allow all potential travelers to complete required medical examinations and other screening procedures required by public health directives and U.S. immigration law."

Gary Maziarz, a former U.S. Marines staff sergeant who has been assisting with the civilian rescue efforts from Afghanistan, said Ace's petition to bring his wife to the U.S. was provisionally approved, but she was never called in for an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul before the Taliban took over the country and the embassy was abandoned. He said he was under the impression that spouses and children of U.S. citizens who were evacuated to Humanitarian City would be quickly processed — given Covid-19 tests and vaccines — and flown to the U.S. But that hasn't been the case with Ace and his wife. Maziarz said he has no reason to believe there is any problem with the background of Ace's wife.

"People say don't stereotype, but the sad thing is we have to," he said. "She's not the typical threat to the U.S. She's a small, petite young woman who is a Muslim, and that's it."

Rescuing His Wife from Afghanistan

Ace first moved to the U.S. in 2012, learned English, got his start selling cars in Riverside, and eventually was promoted to a role as an auto-finance manager. He was making good money and quickly grew to love the freewheeling California culture. He took up billiards, spent time swimming at the beach, and enjoyed drinking and partying at local nightclubs.

"I love California. I love America, living there. It's a country of opportunity," he said.

He became a U.S. citizen in 2016. He was happy being single, he said. "But my family was, like, ‘You can't stay single, you have to get married. You're getting old.’"

His family arranged a marriage to a local girl in Afghanistan, who came from a "super-respected family." After spending several years in the U.S., the idea of an arranged marriage seemed a little "weird," he said. But he agreed to it, calling it "God's decision."

Ace and his wife were married in October 2018, and he started the application paperwork to bring her to California. The immigration process was slowed by the Covid-19 pandemic. His wife's paperwork eventually was approved by the National Visa Center, and she was approved for an embassy interview, but that did not occur before the U.S. evacuated the embassy in Kabul.

Seeing the Taliban on the march over the summer, Ace flew to the Middle East in mid August, hoping to rescue his wife from Afghanistan. He flew first to Dubai and then to Pakistan, where he met his wife. But she didn't have a visa allowing her to stay or fly out of Pakistan. The couple ended up driving eight hours back to Kabul, hoping they could fly out from there. Ace wore a head covering to cover his ponytail and American-style haircut.

"I wasn't scared about my life, honestly," he said. "I was scared because of my wife."

As a young woman in Afghanistan, Ace's wife would have been a prize for the Taliban. "Obviously, she's a prime target for a Taliban forced marriage, because they don't recognize the fact that she's married to an American," Maziarz said.

Maziarz and others helped to get Ace and his wife into a safe house. The couple were part of a group that took busses north to Mazar-i-Sharif in mid October, and they flew out from there. They've spent the past three months in the Humanitarian City compound, where they have a dormitory-style room with a bed, a microwave, and a refrigerator. They're provided with three meals a day. A lot of people complain about the food, Ace said, but it's "not bad."

In late November, Ace's wife was fingerprinted, and the couple were told they would be on the next charter flight out. They packed their bags and were waiting to board the plane. "Then suddenly, they came and cut the wristbands, ” Ace said. “Her background check report hasn't arrived yet." Over a month later, they're still there. "Honestly, I don't know what's going on right now.”

Ace's wife's case was finally transferred over the weekend from Kabul to Abu Dhabi, so the U.S. Embassy in the UAE is now responsible for conducting her interview and final approval. It's still not clear when they'll be allowed to leave, or when the next charter flight is scheduled to depart.

The hardest thing about being stuck in the compound, Ace said, is watching his bank account shrink and not being allowed to work. He worries about not being able to provide for his wife and his 71-year-old father, who came to California a couple of years ago to live with him. "When a pregnant woman needs something, you're, like, ‘What kind of man am I that I can't even bring that to her?"

Family Stranded after Documents Destroyed

A neighboring family in the compound is in a similar bind. The family — a father, mother, two twin toddlers, and a 9-month-old baby with a life-threatening heart condition — are not American citizens but had visas approved last summer that should have allowed them to come into the U.S. Instead, they, too, have been stuck in Humanitarian City.

National Review has verified the family's identity but also has agreed not to name them.

Last summer, the family dropped their passports off at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to be stamped, or "foiled," so they could fly into the U.S. But before they could retrieve their documents, they were destroyed when the embassy was abandoned.

"This action was taken to prevent these sensitive documents from being captured by third parties," the state department wrote in an email to the father on October 21. "We are working diligently to arrange relocation options for individuals whose passports were destroyed."

The family flew to Humanitarian City on the same October flight as Ace and his wife.

An American advocate who is part of the civilian rescue operations and who has been working to facilitate the family's travel to the U.S. said the baby would have died if she had remained in Afghanistan. "The procedures she needed weren't available in Afghanistan," said the facilitator, a former member of the U.S. military who asked to be identified by her code name, Granny.

The baby underwent a heart surgery in Abu Dhabi but requires additional medical attention in the U.S., Granny said. She doesn't understand why the family remains in the compound. She has reached out to the U.S. Embassy, members of the military, elected leaders, immigration attorneys, and the NGO working at the compound, only to hear “crickets."

"It's deplorable," Granny said, "and the ineptitude of the U.S. Department of State, for whatever reason — whether it's purposeful or just because they have no idea what they're doing, or they're severely understaffed, I don't care what excuse they want to use this time — this is unacceptable, unacceptable that we have people with fully issued visas who are sitting for months on end, but any Tom, Dick, and Harry can walk through the southern border and be welcomed in the United States."

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American Citizen Stranded in UAE with Pregnant Wife after Botched Afghanistan Evacuation

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