Chicago family sues U.S. State Department over alleged failure to evacuate American cousins in Gaza

CHICAGO - A Chicago family is suing the U.S. State Department, accusing it of failing to act to evacuate their American cousins from Gaza.

"The U.S. government has left them totally forgotten in Gaza," said Yasmeen Elagha, a Chicago native and third-year law student at Northwestern University.

Elagha's cousins, 18-year-old Borak Alagha and 20-year-old Hashem Alagha, were also born right here in Chicago.

"I grew up with them personally and used to go to their house all the time," said Elagha.

But since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in early October, the two have been stuck in the war-torn Gaza Strip, where it's a fight to survive.

"Every time there's a period where we can't contact them or we're unable to contact them, we don't know if they're dead or alive," said Elagha.

With hundreds of Israeli Americans evacuated on cruise ships and charter flights almost as soon as the violence broke out, the Elagha's filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. State Department of denying the Palestinian-Americans equal protection under the Constitution.

"If you have a class of citizens, under the equal protection clause, being treated a certain way, then a similarly situated class of citizens must be treated the same way," said their attorney, Maria Kari.

The complaint filed in federal court alleges the State Department has failed to protect the young men and failed to "use all resources at their disposal" to "provide any substantive means to evacuate."

"If it's not the Israelis that kill my clients, it's going to be starvation, it's going to be severe dehydration, it's going to be infectious disease that my clients are dealing with," said Kari.

"I asked my American cousin, 'what is the first thing you want to do when you're evacuated?' He said, 'I want to eat and I want to sleep and I want to feel a sense of safety,'" said Elagha.

FOX 32 Chicago has reached out to the U.S. State Department for a response to the complaint, but had not heard back as of Wednesday afternoon.