UNITED STATES—As of Friday, July 3, thousands of Americans remain stranded in Yemen, since the international borders were closed in mid-March due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. As the activists have pointed out, The State Department has not been responsive to this problem so far, as requests of many American citizens to return to the US are still pending.

A tweet by the secretary-general of UN (courtesy of Twitter)

In order to stop the transmission of the coronavirus disease, Yemen was forced to close its border for travel overseas, which left many Americans stranded in the war-zone country. The State Department had booked two flights that returned approximately 300 Americans to their home, on June 28 and July 1.  But the State Department have still not provided help to thousands of other Americans who have expressed the desire to go back to the US. The secretary-general of UN, António Guterres, have also voiced his concerns about the lack of humanitarian aid for people in Yemen, through a Twitter post he made on June 2.

An example of families stranded within Yemen is the Alghazali family, which is currently broken up due to the travel ban in US blocking flights from seven countries including Yemen, which is a rule put by the American president, Donald Trump. The youngest child in the family, Daoud, who is thirteen, is in the US staying with family friends in Michigan. The father, Izdereha, who is in based in California, is working two jobs, and is unable to take care of him. The mother, Miriam, however, is isolated from her son and husband, in the city of Djibouti, in Yemen. She has been struggling to go back to her country of birth, US, to see her family, as she has been communicating with the US embassy for a visa. She has appeared in the US Supreme Court last month, to contest the terms around the ban, but the ban was not removed.