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How an Afghan family facing threats put its trust in a U.S. veteran | 60 Minutes
From his home in Kansas City — more than 7,000 miles away from Afghanistan — U.S. Army veteran Jason Kander joined with a group of private citizens to plot a fake wedding to disguise the escape of hundreds of Afghans vulnerable to the Taliban.
Many Afghan allies were left behind when American troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 after 20 years of war. Kander, a one-time politician who ended his burgeoning political career to deal with untreated PTSD, collaborated with civilians and other veterans to help evacuate nearly 400 Afghans, including Rahim Rauffi and his family.
“Ultimately I just made the decision that it didn’t matter. I would deal with it [PTSD] afterwards,” Kander said. “And I made the decision, which I knew at the time was probably poor judgment, to say to Rahim, ‘No matter how long it takes, we’re going to get this done.’ I knew that I was biting off more than I could chew.”
What happened when the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan
The Taliban retook Afghanistan as the U.S. withdrew. Many Afghans, fearful of what might happen under the fundamentalist Islamic group, overwhelmed the Kabul airport and clung to departing U.S. military planes in a last grasp at freedom.
“It felt like leaving a friend behind when you had promised them you wouldn’t,” Kander said.
At home in Kansas City, Kander watched in shock as Afghanistan fell. He reached out to Salam Raoufi, who had worked as Kander’s primary translator when he served in Afghanistan as an Army intelligence officer. The translator was safe and out of Afghanistan, but his nephew — Rahim Rauffi — was not.
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Rauffi was squarely in Taliban crosshairs because of his work in payroll at Afghanistan International Bank. In his job, he’d had access to a list of tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked with everybody from the United Nations to the U.S., Kander said.
“Once the Taliban took over, one of their first priorities was to find those people and make an example of them by imprisoning them or killing them,” Kander said.
Rauffi’s refusal to cooperate enraged the Taliban. Under the shroud of darkness, the Taliban left notes, known as night letters, at the Rauffi home sentencing Rahim and his entire family to death.
Getting Afghans to safety
Hope for a passage to safety rested in the hands of Kander — a Little League dad nine-and-a -half time zones away. He and Rauffi exchanged encrypted text messages.
“My thinking was how in the world can I go on with the rest of my life thinking, ‘Maybe there was something else I could’ve done for Rahim,'” Kander said.
Kander’s wife, Diana, became concerned her husband’s desire to rescue the Rauffi family of 12 might lead him to go to Afghanistan himself.
“He called me from the other room. He’s like, ‘Hey — where’s my passport, just by the by?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, zero chance you’re even getting access to your passport,'” she said.
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Kander and his co-conspirators were getting desperate to come up with a workable plan.
“We were also running out of ideas by that point,” Kander said.
Once the last American military plane departed Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, the Taliban controlled the Kabul airport, choking off the most obvious escape route. Kander and his group directed the imperiled Afghans to head to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The Taliban wasn’t yet as entrenched in the north of the country, but for the Rauffi family the city of Mazar-e-Sharif was a treacherous 11-hour drive dotted with Taliban checkpoints. They started their journey early on Sept. 1, 2021, and were stopped almost right away by armed members of the Taliban.
“Only because of my kids’ crying and shouting… they just released us,” Rauffi said.
They finally rolled into Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth largest city.
“The Rauffis are in Mazar-e-Sharif, and myself and the people I was now working with are engaged in solving a few problems, or trying to. One, how do we raise the money to get an airplane chartered to fly in there to pick up close to 400 people?” Kander said. “And also how do we make it so that the Taliban doesn’t know that we’re doing this?”
Welcome to the wedding
The day after the Rauffis arrived in Mazar-e-Sharif, the Taliban paraded in the center of town. The Rauffis went underground for weeks, finding their own safe houses. As the family dodged the Taliban, Kander and his group were finalizing a Hail Mary plan.
On Sept. 21, it was go time. Kander told the family to take one bag per person and head to a wedding palace. He gave Rauffii a code word: Bella, the name of Kander’s own daughter. What Kander neglected to mention was to whom Rauffi should give the code word.
At the wedding palace, Rauffi spotted a man with a beard, a turban, a laptop and a look of authority. Rauffi went up to the man and gave him the code word and his last name.
“My heart was beating very fast,” Rauffi said. “Then he said, ’12 people?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Then he said, ‘Bring them in.'”
Once inside, they headed to a large hall filled with nearly 400 people. Rauffi didn’t know any of them.
“I call Jason. I say, ‘Brother, I am in, but there are more people,'” Rauffi said. “Then he told me, ‘Welcome to the wedding party.'”
There was no bride or groom; it was all a ruse to slip 383 Afghans past the unsuspecting Taliban.
From Afghanistan to Albania
The fake wedding threw the Taliban off the scent, but 383 Afghans were marooned in the wedding hall for three days as Kander continued developing the evacuation plan. Through crowdfunding and private donations, Kander and others frantically raised money to charter a commercial plane that would whisk away the entire “wedding party” to Albania, where they would await clearance to come to the U.S.
Inside the wedding hall, the Rauffis had no idea this was going on. Eventually, Rahim Rauffi got a boarding pass through email. It was on legal letterhead and didn’t look particularly official. The passes were the handiwork of the rescue team in the U.S.
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“The boarding passes, which were quite unofficial, only matter if there is a flight manifest document from the nation of Albania, otherwise they’re just a piece of paper you’re going to present and then go to prison,” Kander said. “So what was going to happen was the Albanian government was going to send, to the Taliban, a visa-cleared flight manifest, a list of people that said, ‘These are the people who we are expecting to have land in our country.’ Now, what these people needed to do was present something that had their pictures on it, had their names, their date of birth, everything that would match up to what was on that document.”
In other words, everything rested on the Taliban —a group more known for executions than following international protocol.
The 383 Afghans arrived at the Mazar-e-Sharif airport on buses. The Taliban was in the terminal and on the tarmac. Rauffi said he was shaking and sweating. The family could see their plane to freedom.
“It’s a gambling that you even didn’t see your cards,” Rauffi said. “What you have? What you got? What will happen? But you just gamble your entire life.”
The bet paid off. The Taliban honored the homemade boarding passes and the Albanian manifest.
The wedding party boarded the charter plane, while Kander —home in Kansas City— followed the drama on a flight tracking app.
“There’s zero planes over Afghanistan,” he said. “And then finally, they’re on the plane and the transponder turns on. And you see one little airplane turn on on the runway in Mazar-e-Sharif.”
After the flight landed in Tirana, Albania, the wedding party was bused to a seaside resort.
The journey wasn’t over yet though.
From Albania to the U.S.
Kander still had to figure out how to get the Rauffis and the other Afghans into the U.S. He said he’d been told by people at the Department of Homeland Security that it would probably take a few weeks. But months later, Kander said the State Department announced that any Afghans who had gotten out of the country after Aug. 31 by private means would not be part of Operation Allies Welcome.
“Basically it was all code for, ‘You’re on your own. If you got out this way, that’s a private effort, we got nothing to do with it,'” Kander said. “And that was a big shock and a huge problem.”
A year passed. The wedding party was still stuck at the resort in Albania and the money covering the tab was running low.
“There were some very generous donors who helped us over time. And the people who had helped me raise the money in the first place did a lot of work,” Kander said. “And it’s taken a toll on all of us. But I think now if you talk to any of us, we’d say it’s, you know, the most important thing we’ve ever done.”
Finally, nearly two years into the wedding party’s saga, emails arrived from the Department of Homeland Security–the Afghans had been approved officially to resettle in the U.S.
“I was, like, crying inside,” Rauffi said. “Now you have a future.”
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He knew exactly where he wanted to call home—wherever Kander lived. In June of 2023, the Kanders welcomed the Rauffis to Kansas City.
Today, Rauffi is back to working in accounts at a bank–this one in downtown Kansas City. His brothers work there as security guards. The Rauffis and the Kanders, who now live 10 minutes apart, regularly get together for meals.
Rauffi says he sometimes wakes up during the night wondering if this is real.
“I’m going to my kids’ room and see them and check them,” he said. “They are sleeping very comfortable. And the next day, they are going to school.”
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Mortgage rates soared in the post-pandemic era, leaving borrowers scrambling to find home loans under 7.00%. This came as a big shock to those who’d become used to the 3.00% to 4.00% rates that lasted from the end of the great recession until COVID-19 hit and sent inflation surging.
As a result, many would-be homebuyers put off their home purchases in hopes of lower mortgage rates, and refinancing was also off the table for many due to high borrowing costs. When inflation began to cool, though, it appeared they’d get their wish for lower costs as the Federal Reserve dropped the benchmark interest rate during both the September and November Fed meetings.
Unfortunately, while there was a brief dip in current mortgage rates, the trend soon reversed course, and the cost of borrowing actually got more expensive again — frustrating those hoping for low rates to finally come in 2024. So for those waiting to buy a home and putting off their purchase in hopes they’ll get a lower rate, the big question now is: What’s going to happen with home-buying costs in December?
Start comparing your top mortgage rate options online now.
Will mortgage rates fall in December? Here’s what experts predict
If you’re wondering whether mortgage rates will fall this month, here’s what experts have to say on this issue.
Mortgage rates probably won’t fall much, if at all, in December
There’s some unfortunate news for those hoping mortgage rates will decline in December. There’s little reason to believe this is a likely outcome.
“While we may see mortgage rates drop modestly in December, anyone expecting a significant change for the better may be disappointed,” says Darren Tooley, senior loan officer at Cornerstone Financial Services.
Change likely isn’t on the horizon for a few reasons, according to Tooley.
“The next two-day Fed meeting isn’t until mid-December, and while most experts still predict another rate cut of 25 basis points, there are signals they may pause until they meet again in January,” Tooley says. “Plus, even if the Fed does make another cut, mortgage rates are still near 7% even after the Fed cut rates by 50 basis points in September and by another 25 basis points in November.”
While frustrating for buyers, these trends show Fed rate drops don’t necessarily mean mortgage rates decline. In fact, Sarah Alvarez, vice president of mortgage banking at William Raveis Mortgage, explained that the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut rates doesn’t directly impact mortgages at all, as the Fed only sets the benchmark rate at which banks borrow from each other. A decline of 0.75% in the benchmark rate doesn’t mean mortgages get 0.75% cheaper.
Find out how affordable the right mortgage loan could be today.
Mortgage rates may rise
Stable rates may seem like a bad outcome for those who’ve been waiting for a decline in borrowing costs, but there’s actually a worse potential outcome on the table.
“It seems unlikely that mortgage rates will fall in December,” Alvarez says. “A better question is whether they will remain stable or continue on their recent march up. Unfortunately, concerns over the next administration’s potentially inflationary policies have shot 10-year treasury yields up, which is typically the closest correlation for mortgage rates banks are offering.”
Aaron Craig, VP of mortgage and indirect sales for Georgia’s Own Credit Union, points out another troubling fact.
“After the last couple Fed Funds rate cuts in the last couple months, mortgage interest rates actually went up,” Craig says.
This could easily happen again, especially as treasury yields trend higher.
Future rate cuts could be coming
So, is there any hope for those looking to buy a home? While the news may be bleak for December, there is reason to believe there are promising days ahead.
“Unfortunately, I don’t believe we will see inflation numbers coming down in December, which we will need before we see any major improvement in mortgage rates. However, If we can get better than expected inflationary data and if there are signs of slowing in the jobs reports, along with a December rate cut by the Fed, we may see rates hit the mid-6% range, which would be a significant win for homebuyers,” Tooley says.
Waiting for this to happen may not be the best idea for would-be buyers, though, especially as many experts think a big drop in mortgage costs could result in borrowers flooding the housing market and sending home prices higher.
The bottom line
Ultimately, for those who are in a good financial position and who can afford to borrow at today’s rates, moving forward sooner rather than later is likely the best choice. Future refinancing is an option, but returning to today’s rates or home prices in the future may not be, so don’t let hopes of a future rate drop hold you back from your dream home.
Washington — President Biden announced late Sunday that he issued a pardon for his son Hunter Biden, in a major reversal in the final weeks of his presidency.
Mr. Biden repeatedly pledged not to pardon his son, who was convicted in June of three separate felony charges related to his purchase of a revolver in 2018 when he was battling an addiction to illegal drugs, which he lied about on paperwork to obtain the gun. He also pleaded guilty to nine tax evasion charges in a separate case in September.
“Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” Mr. Biden said in a statement Sunday night.
The president argued that “Hunter was treated differently” than others under similar circumstances, claiming that the charges were brought after “several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.”
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” Mr. Biden said.
The “Full and Unconditional Pardon” applies to any crimes Hunter Biden may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.
Mr. Biden did not address the pardon with reporters before boarding Air Force One for his trip to Angola.
Hunter Biden charges and allegations
Hunter Biden was investigated and prosecuted by special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware who was kept on by Mr. Biden’s administration in 2021, when other Trump-era prosecutors were asked to resign, in order to continue the probes into Hunter’s conduct. Attorney General Merrick Garland later elevated Weiss to special counsel status after whistleblowers and congressional Republicans alleged irregularities in the probe.
Weiss’ office declined to comment on the pardon.
Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley, two IRS whistleblowers who came forward to raise concerns about what they said were the Justice Department’s efforts to shield Hunter Biden, said in a statement that it was “a sad day for law abiding taxpayers to witness this special privilege for the powerful.”
Before dropping out of the race for president, Mr. Biden had committed not to pardon his son, saying in an interview with ABC News in June that he had ruled it out. After opting to leave the race the next month, the White House maintained that Mr. Biden had no plans to pardon his son, though the possible political consequences of the decision had decreased. The White House said as recently as last month that the president still had no plans to issue a pardon.
“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction — mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport. Despite all of this, I have maintained my sobriety for more than five years because of my deep faith and the unwavering love and support of my family and friends,” Hunter Biden said in a statement Sunday night.
“I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering,” the president’s son said.
Hunter Biden was set to be sentenced for the gun convictions on Dec. 12 and on Dec. 16 for the tax evasion charges.
Following the White House announcement of the pardon, Hunter Biden’s legal team informed the federal judges overseeing his cases in Delaware and California about the pardon so the cases can be formally dismissed and the sentencing hearings set for later this month be canceled.
Hunter Biden was indicted on three felony gun charges in September after a proposed plea deal with federal prosecutors fell apart. The deal would have had him plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and enter a diversion program instead of pleading guilty to a felony gun possession count.
During the court hearing in which the plea deal was set to be finalized, the judge overseeing the case raised concerns over the terms while Hunter Biden’s legal team pushed back against prosecutors over whether the agreement was to protect the president’s son from any future criminal charges.
Hunter Biden was accused of lying on paperwork and illegally purchasing and possessing a gun while he was addicted to crack cocaine. Federal law prohibits users of illegal drugs from owning firearms.
Prosecutors said the president’s son lied about his drug use on a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives form when he bought a revolver and several other items from a Wilmington, Delaware, gun store on Oct. 12, 2018.
In the separate case in California, a federal grand jury last December charged Hunter Biden with three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor offenses. The president’s son was accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes while living an “extravagant lifestyle.”
According to the indictment, Hunter Biden made some $7 million in income from his foreign business dealings from 2016 through 2019. He was accused of spending nearly $5 million during that same time period on “everything but his taxes,” including on drugs, escorts, luxury hotels, cars and clothing. Hunter Biden was accused of falsely listing those purchases as business expenses.
After unsuccessfully attempting to enter an “Alford” plea, wherein a defendant accepts a guilty verdict while maintaining their innocence, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to the tax evasion charges on Sept. 5.
“Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form,” Mr. Biden said Sunday night. “Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.”
Reaction to the pardon
On social media, President-elect Donald Trump called the Biden pardon “an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”
Other Republicans on Sunday and Monday decried the pardon. House Speaker Mike Johnson posted X that “trust in our justice system has been almost irreparably damaged by the Bidens and their use and abuse of it.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote that is he is “shocked” about the pardon because Mr. Biden “said many many times he wouldn’t & I believed him[.] Shame on me.”
Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, meanwhile, wrote on Sunday that as a father, he understands Mr. Biden’s desire to pardon his son, but said he was “disappointed that he put his family ahead of the country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation.”
Presidential pardons
Hunter Biden is the 26th person to receive a pardon during Mr. Biden’s presidency. Most of the others received pardons for drug offenses. Trump granted 29 pardons at this point in his first term, but issued a total of 143 pardons by the time he left office in 2020.
This is not the first time a president has pardoned a family member. President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger Clinton, before leaving office. Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, during his first term. Trump announced that he intends to nominate Kushner as U.S. ambassador to France on Saturday.
The two federal cases against Hunter Biden came amid a backdrop of Republican-led congressional inquiries into his business dealings and whether they involved Mr. Biden. The president has maintained he had nothing to do with his son’s businesses and the investigative committees produced no evidence showing the president engaged in wrongdoing.
Robert Legare and
contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — U.S.-Israeli hostage Omer Neutra is confirmed dead in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Monday.
The IDF says the 21-year-old from Long Island was killed fighting Hamas militants during the Oct. 7 massacre. His body was taken into Gaza, where it is still being held by Hamas.
Neutra had deferred his enrollment at SUNY Binghamton to join the IDF after high school.
“We just learned that this prayer couldn’t be answered for the family of Omer Neutra. Omer was barbarically murdered by Hamas in the October 7 attacks,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement. “We pray that his body can be returned to his family, who have been speaking out for him & all hostages since that horrific day.”
Israel says 97 hostages remain in captivity.
Families of hostages respond to Hamas propaganda video
Over the weekend, Neutra’s parents spoke at a rally in Central Park, alongside the father of another Israeli-American hostage.
Edan Alexander, 20, grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey and joined the Israel Defense Forces out of high school.
He was seen alive in a new propaganda video released by Hamas on Saturday.
His father described seeing him in the video as both emotional and disturbing, but said the family was happy to get a sign of life.
Stick with CBS News New York for the latest updates on this developing story.
