Trump administration takes heat as Americans slowly return from Middle East

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The Hill's Headlines | PM - March 6, 2026

The Hill's Headlines | PM - March 6, 2026

Tens of thousands of Americans are slowly returning to the U.S. after getting caught in the crossfire of President Trump’s decision to launch a war against Iran, throwing the region into chaos. 

The State Department has said it’s helping charter flights and evacuation plans for stranded Americans as the conflict enters its eighth day. The practical assistance came days after Trump launched strikes against Iran in coordination with Israel that left U.S. citizens on their own to seek shelter or escape. 

For Americans in the Middle East, the State Department recommends:

For information on charter flights CLICK HERE

Enroll in the STEP program (https://step.state.gov) for the State Department to know your whereabouts and communicate updated safety and security information

To reach the State Department directly from abroad call +1-202-501-4444

Follow the State Department’s travel website for updated warnings and information https://travel.state.gov/content/travel.html https://x.com/TravelGov https://www.instagram.com/statedept/ https://www.facebook.com/statedept https://www.youtube.com/statedept

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel.html

https://x.com/TravelGov

https://www.instagram.com/statedept/

https://www.facebook.com/statedept

https://www.youtube.com/statedept

Asked on Tuesday why there weren’t evacuation plans in place or planes ready to take Americans out of the Middle East, Trump said “It happened all very quickly.”

Senate Democrats seized on Trump’s remarks as admitting there was no evacuation plan for Americans in the region. 

“Americans deserve a government that steps up to help them through times of crisis, not turn their back on them to fend for themselves,” a group of Senate Democrats wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on March 4. 

On March 4 the State Department opened up a crisis intake form, promising free charter flights and transportation options for stranded Americans. 

The first plane chartered by the department arrived in the Middle East on Thursday and landed back in Washington on Friday.  

The State Department on Friday said that since Feb. 28, nearly 24,000 Americans have returned home from the Middle East, and the department directly assisted nearly 13,000 Americans abroad, offering security guidance and travel assistance. 

But in the immediate hours and days following the U.S. strikes against Iran, Americans were largely on their own.

Those transiting through major international hubs like Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Doha, Qatar; or Amman, Jordan — whose flights were grounded by the fighting — were initially told by the State Department not to rely on the U.S. government for assisted departures or evacuations for four days. At the same time, the State Department issued urgent warnings for Americans in at least 14 countries to depart immediately. 

Alex Bruesewitz, an adviser to Trump, said he organized and paid for a private plane to take him and seven other Americans to evacuate the Middle East and that he relied on a long-list of high profile connections to execute the plan. 

In a post on X, Bruesewitz thanked Qatar’s prime minister, the government of Saudi Arabia, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle as all helping to facilitate the evacuation. 

Amy Mills, from Colorado, was nearing the end of a weeks-long guided trip in Egypt when Trump ordered strikes against Iran on Feb. 28. She has a departure flight scheduled early next week from Cairo, and said changing it earlier would have cost her between $3,500 and $6,000. 

Mills said she was aware of rising tensions in the Middle East, in particular after the trip was already planned, but said “it just didn’t seem like they were going to” break out into conflict. 

“Maybe it was my denial,” she joked. “But it’s very real. It’s very real, and it’s escalating quickly,” 

Mills said the tour company she’s traveling with booked them into a European hotel, worried that American brands would be targets for attacks. And she’s planning to lay low and hope her flight departs as scheduled. 

Cairo’s international airport has so far appeared to maintain operations during the week of fighting, and American citizens are encouraged to travel there for more predictable commercial options. 

In the UAE, the country’s reputation as a safe haven from Middle East conflict was shattered in the wake of the U.S. and Israeli strikes, with Iran sending an estimated 1,100 missiles and drones. 

At least 65 drones broke through UAE defenses, and their collisions shocked residents and tourists traveling throughout the country. 

“There was a good amount of caution as the war broke out and alerts went out from the government warning of incoming attacks and to shelter in place. But, with Iran’s capabilities rapidly degraded and fewer strikes entering the air space, things are calm and public activities have resumed,” retired Navy SEAL Robert Harward, who’s currently in the UAE, told The Hill. 

Stranded travelers are being treated to cost-free stays at their hotels funded by the UAE government. 

Those less familiar with military operations say they haven’t been harmed but are uncertain about when they’ll return home.

“We are safe but still here. We feel very safe where we are but hope to be able to get out soon. Please continue to call the below numbers. We would like to go home please,” Natalie Potesta Zurawski, an American and mother of four stranded in the UAE, wrote in a post on Facebook. 

Adding to some Americans’ anxieties, one person was afraid to share their travel story because of a UAE law that imposes a $50,000 fine and prison time for contradicting statements from leaders or posting content online that may cause public panic.

Sean Starkey, an American contractor working in Qatar, told Houston’s KHOU11 that he received no communication from the U.S. government, despite being enrolled in the State Department’s travel advisory program, STEP. 

“I’m sitting here relying on Qatar’s missile defense system,” Starkey told the outlet. “I have no idea how good it is or how bad it is. It never stops being scary.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday defended the administration’s preparations, saying the State Department issued Level 4 “Do Not Travel” warnings dating back to January for “many of these countries in the region.” 

While the State Department issued an urgent appeal for Americans to depart specific countries in the Middle East on March 2, many of those countries still remain at a Level 3 of “reconsider travel.” Level 3 alerts for those countries were also issued between March 2 and 3, two to three days after the initial U.S. strikes and retaliatory Iranian strikes. 

Luis Moreno, a former ambassador to Jamaica, is critical of the Trump administration, accusing them of non-existent planning and putting unqualified political appointees in positions that typically go to career professionals with institutional training in the agency’s crisis response. 

Moreno, who served as a diplomat in a variety of hardship posts from the Caribbean to the Middle East, said embassies have Urgency Action Committee meetings that ramp up when an impending crisis is looming, or a crisis has struck, and an Emergency Action Plan that helps detail possible trip wires for action and detailed responses. 

“It’s always steps and stages. And supposed to be very organized,” he said.

Moreno is a member of the Steady State, an organization of 400 retired and former national security leaders advocating strong defense of the U.S. constitution, democracy and professionalism. 

He criticized the Trump administration’s closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — which had a staff of 10,000 people — as critical hands in aiding U.S. citizens during an emergency. 

“In any embassy, a good manager, a good deputy chief of mission, a good ambassador, uses his entire USAID staff in emergencies, as control officers, as points of coordination,” he said.

“They’re used to managing aircraft coming in. They know who to get the clearances from, they know who to coordinate with. They can serve as site officers when we have evacuations planned for American citizens.”

Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and staff for the U.S. National Security Council told The Hill the lack of confirmed ambassadors in the Middle East is also cause for concern amid the high rate of Americans struggling to evacuate the region.  

“This is a war that the United States started at a time and in the place of its own choosing,” he said. “It decided that it was not going to tell its own citizens to evacuate. It did not evacuate people: unaccompanied family members and non-essential personnel from embassies.

Daalder said citizens have been made “vulnerable to the possibility of war at its most extreme” without warning.  

“The only people who knew the war was coming was the United States and the United States didn’t tell anybody, including its own citizens. That’s just unforgivable,” he added. 

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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