Some Afghan refugee children are arriving in the U.S. without family members

Some refugee children who have been evacuated from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover are arriving on American soil without family members, prompting U.S. authorities to send them to government shelters, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials told CBS News.

Since the Biden administration started airlifting at-risk Afghans from Kabul earlier this summer, U.S. immigration authorities have designated at least 34 Afghan children as unaccompanied minors, sending some of them to HHS-overseen shelters for undocumented migrant youth. HHS officials said some of the children who were designated as unaccompanied minors upon arrival were subsequently reunited with family members who had also been evacuated to the U.S. Some of them traveled with non-parental adult family members, rendering them "unaccompanied alien children" under U.S. law.