The following is part of a series about how the State Department age determinations for a special immigrant visa applicant’s son put him in needless peril for six years.

In 2018, a U.S. consular officer told special immigrant visa applicant Wali Akrami that he would have to leave his adult son Waheed in Afghanistan if he hoped to escape the Taliban’s death threats and emigrate to the United States. The officer pushed his family’s visas and passports back across the table.

Speaking to the Washington Examiner through his son, Aleem, an SIV recipient who trained military personnel on clearing improvised explosive devices, Wali said he told the consular officer he would not leave his son in dangerous conditions in Afghanistan. Referencing the numerous times his life was threatened during 12 years of working with American personnel, Wali elaborated, “If something happens, let it happen with all my family.”

According to Wali, the consular officer “promised” that within three to six months of receiving his green card, Wali would be able to file forms that would allow Waheed to come to the U.S. Trusting the officer’s word, Wali made the terrible choice to leave Waheed behind and move to the U.S. with his wife and daughters.

The Akrami family’s reunion would not occur for six long years after the family had endured staggering amounts of pain. And while Waheed’s arrival in Rochester, New York, on April 9 brought relief, it also came with the heavy affirmation that the government made a serious error in deciding that he was ineligible for an SIV in 2018.

When Wali applied to the SIV program, children of the primary SIV applicant qualified for a derivative SIV only if they were under 21 years of age on the exact date when the primary applicant submitted their I-360 SIV application after achieving Chief of Mission approval. According to the April 1994 date of birth on Waheed’s passport, medical test, Child Status Protection Act worksheet, national identification card, and local village development committee paperwork, he was 20 years and seven months old when Wali filed his I-360 application in 2015.

The consular officer who conducted the Akrami family’s SIV interviews evidently ignored this plethora of evidence. To determine Waheed’s age, Wali said the consular officer asked him whether Waheed was 23 or 24 years old at the time of the interview. Given that Afghans place less value on birthdays and current physical age than Westerners, Wali was flummoxed by the question. He told the interviewer that Waheed was born in 1994 and was probably 24 years old at the time of the interview. The rest of the family deferred to Wali’s assessment.

Using the family’s sworn statements, the consular officer made an independent assessment that Waheed was born in 1993, making him seven months too old to qualify for the SIV program.

Deborah Abell, a volunteer with the Rochester-based nonprofit organization Keeping Our Promise, made a series of attempts to reverse Waheed’s rejection. What she gathered were contradictions and confusing facts from the U.S. government.

When Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) office reached out for information on the Akrami case, the embassy told her staff that it “only use[s] official civil documents when evaluating an applicant’s eligibility, not verbal statements by the applicants during the interview.” This contradicts the State Department’s official explanation that it refused Waheed’s SIV based on the “applicant, applicant’s youngest sister, and both parents attest[ing] under oath that applicant … is currently 24 years old.”

Another consular officer assured Abell that the Akramis’ interview would have involved far more than the simple request that Wali pick an age for Waheed. The officer explained that interviewers would have asked questions about the worldwide events that were taking place at Waheed’s birth and during various childhood milestones. The officer said that after “this very careful and detailed interview,” officers would “construct a timeline and repeatedly confirm it with the families in question to make sure it’s accurate.”

Abell found this assertion, too, to be false. She asked the Akramis at length on multiple occasions to tell her about the interview process. For six years, they have insisted that the interviewer only asked whether Waheed was 23 or 24 years old. Wali related the same story to the Washington Examiner.

Ellen Smith, the executive director of Keeping Our Promise, said that uncovering further details about the family’s visa interview is impossible, as the information is protected from Freedom of Information Act inquiries “for national security purposes.”

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For six years, Abell refused to give up on Waheed’s case. In the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, she applied for humanitarian parole for the Akramis’ son, which Waheed was fortunate to receive. Waheed’s humanitarian parole paperwork is a glaring reminder of the Akramis’ six-year ordeal. In it, the U.S. government records Waheed’s birth year as 1994.

For Smith, the date is an admission of the State Department’s failure. “Waheed should have been here under the SIV provision of his father’s visa,” Smith argued.

Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News Digital and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into nearly two decades of war and the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.