US Judge Mistakenly Gave Afghan Baby to Marine While Family Still Searched

A years-long international custody battle over an Afghan child has exposed serious flaws in America’s adoption system and created diplomatic tensions that continue to this day.

The case revolves around a baby girl found in the rubble of a 2019 U.S. military raid in Afghanistan. With a fractured skull, broken leg, and severe burns, the infant—then just two months old—was rushed to a military hospital at Bagram Air Base in Kabul where American service members quickly grew attached to her.

Marine Joshua Mast, a military lawyer on a short-term assignment in Afghanistan, met the girl days after her rescue and became determined to bring her to the United States. Despite attending a State Department meeting where officials clearly outlined international obligations to reunite the child with her family, Mast pursued custody through a rural Virginia courthouse.

In November 2019, Fluvanna County Circuit Judge Richard Moore granted Mast and his wife Stephanie temporary adoption of the baby, who remained 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. The judge believed the child was a stateless orphan in critical medical condition with neither family nor country to claim her.

“That is not what happened,” Justice Department lawyer Kathryn Wyer later told Moore during a 2022 court proceeding. Nearly everything the judge had believed about the baby was untrue.

Moore had signed off on the adoption during an unusual weekend emergency hearing, believing the girl was the daughter of foreign terrorists and needed immediate medical evacuation to the United States. Court records show the judge was never informed that the U.S. government had already identified Afghan relatives willing to care for the child and was in the process of reuniting her with family.

The swift adoption skipped critical safeguards. There was no notice to the federal government, which would have objected. No one conducted a home study of the adoptive parents with the child present. No one investigated her background or notified anyone in Afghanistan of the proceedings.

“I’ll probably think about this the rest of my life whether I should have said, sorry, that child is in Afghanistan. We’re just going to stand down,” Moore later admitted. “I don’t know whether that’s what I should have done.”

Shortly after Moore granted the adoption, U.S. officials discovered a man claiming to be the child’s uncle. He explained that the girl’s father had been a local farmer, not a terrorist, and that his wife and five of their children had also been killed in the raid. After vetting by the Afghan government and approval from U.S. officials, the baby was placed with relatives.

Meanwhile, the Masts continued their efforts to bring the child to America. In February 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed a cable dismissing the Fluvanna custody orders as “flawed” and warning that further delay in transferring the child could be perceived as the “U.S. government holding an Afghan child against the will of her extended family and the Afghan government.”

Despite this, Moore granted the Masts permanent adoption in December 2020, still insisting the girl was a “stateless, orphan minor subject to this court’s jurisdiction.”

The situation reached a turning point during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The Masts, working with military contacts, arranged for the Afghan couple raising the child to be evacuated to America. When they arrived at Fort Pickett in Virginia, government officials—unaware of the State Department’s earlier position—separated the child from the couple and handed her to the Masts.

“Please give me my daughter,” the Afghan woman pleaded as she “crumpled to the floor crying.” The officials refused, and the Masts drove away with the child.

In 2023, a different judge, Claude Worrell, voided the adoption, ruling that Afghanistan had the right to determine the child’s fate as its citizen. The Virginia Court of Appeals upheld this decision, and the case is now before the Virginia Supreme Court, which has yet to issue a ruling.

As legal proceedings continue, the child—now six years old—remains with the Mast family, while the Afghan couple, who have kept a bedroom ready for her in their Texas home, have not seen her in four years.

The Justice Department has characterized what happened as an apparent “endorsement of child abduction” that threatens America’s international standing, though the agency has indicated it may be reconsidering its position under the second Trump administration.