San Francisco Firm Sues Biden Administration in Push to Evacuate Americans Trapped in Gaza

Update, 1 p.m. Saturday: An 81-year-old Palestinian-American woman from the San Francisco Peninsula, who had been stuck in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war erupted last month, was able to cross safely into Egypt on Friday through the Rafah border crossing, the attorney representing her family said in a social media post.

Original story, 4 a.m. Friday:
A San Francisco law firm this week sued the Biden administration for failing to quickly evacuate several Palestinian-Americans who are among the hundreds of U.S. citizens still trapped in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, name U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as defendants, claiming the government has not upheld its constitutional duty to bring American citizens home from a war zone.

“We are asking, we are demanding, that the United States implement an emergency evacuation order and evacuate all U.S. citizens from Gaza immediately and safely,” said Ghassan Shamieh, an attorney with the firm Shamieh, Shamieh, and Ternieden, which is representing the families of two Palestinian-American women.

“We are here to make sure that our government knows that we will hold them accountable for the safety of every single one of its citizens until they are evacuated safely,” he told reporters early Thursday afternoon, in front of the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco.

Shamieh said that the women, one of whom is an 81-year-old grandmother from the San Francisco Peninsula, had unsuccessfully tried multiple times in the last two days to enter Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, which was just reopened on Wednesday.

This legal action, Shamieh said, is among at least seven similar suits spearheaded by the Michigan-based Arab American Civil Rights League on behalf of U.S. clients stranded in Gaza.

“We have no doubt that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, could obtain clearance for all of its citizens,” Shamieh said. He noted that he would withdraw the legal challenges if his clients are immediately evacuated.

That, at least partially, came to pass just hours later, when Shamieh announced late Thursday afternoon that the younger of the two women had successfully crossed into Egypt, even as the 81-year-old was still stuck in Gaza.

“We consider this a clear legal victory for our client, and we attribute this victory to the mounting legal and public pressure the US government is currently facing,” Shamieh said in a subsequent press release.

The evacuated woman’s grandson, who joined Shamieh at his early afternoon press event, said he had received a Facetime call from his grandmother in Gaza the previous week, after being unable to reach her for days.

“‘This may be the last time that I’ll see you,’” Asher Rous, the grandson, said his grandmother told him. He recounted her saying that the bombings were getting worse and that she didn’t know what was going to happen.

“‘I just wanted to say my goodbyes,’” his grandmother told him.

The news of her safe passage comes as hundreds of civilians with foreign passports are poised to leave Gaza for the first time since Israel began its relentless missile attacks some three weeks ago in its resolve to destroy Hamas. The bombardment, in retaliation for Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, has obliterated huge swaths of Gaza. As of Thursday, more than 9,000 Palestinians had so far been killed in the three-week bombing campaign, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The State Department has been in contact with about 400 American citizens trying to flee Gaza, according to the State Department, and President Biden said “74 American folks” had been able to leave Gaza on Thursday.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller declined to comment on the pending litigation, but stressed that the Biden administration “has no higher priority than getting those American citizens out of Gaza, getting them out as soon as possible.”

“It’s been a difficult process. … when you have Hamas controlling one side of the border and just not being willing to let anyone go,” Miller added. “That said, we continue to work on it, we have made progress, and I hope that we can get them out in the coming days.”