The U.S. government has repeatedly interfered with a Marine’s fight to maintain custody of his adopted five-year-old daughter, who was saved by Army Rangers from an Afghan battlefield in 2019.

Marine Corps Major Joshua Mast and his wife Stephanie are embroiled in both federal and state lawsuits over their adopted daughter, five-year-old “Baby L.,” as she has been called in court filings.

An Afghan Pashtun couple claiming to be related to Baby L. are suing the Masts for custody of the child in state court and filed another lawsuit in federal court over tortious interference with parental rights, fraud, common law conspiracy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment. The Afghan couple are referred to as “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” in the federal lawsuit.

The U.S. government has been involved in the federal court case, after the Department of State transferred Baby L. over to the Does while they were in Afghanistan, before they evacuated to the U.S. amid the 2021 withdrawal.

The secretaries of state and defense were initially named nominal defendants in the federal lawsuit. They were both dismissed as nominal defendants in August 2023. However, the U.S. has continued to participate in the case, as the U.S. Department of Justice has filed motions to quash subpoenas and seal a document on behalf of both the DOS and DOD.

Baby L. is saved in Battle

Baby L. was saved after a U.S. Special Forces operation was conducted in Afghanistan on Sept. 5-6, 2019, against Al Qaeda foreign fighters, according to an unclassified military report. She was less than two months old when Army Rangers found her by her mother, who was one of the Al Qaeda foreign fighters and died from her wounds after setting off a suicide vest she was wearing.

Baby L. “suffered a fragmentation wound to the lower extremity which had fractured her hip, and she sustained a fractured skull and 2nd degree burns,” the report added.

Unlike Afghan Pashtuns, Baby L. “is most likely ethnically Turkmen or a Uighur from Turkmenistan,” according to the report.

Army Rangers took Baby L. to Craig Joint Theatre Hospital at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan to receive medical care.

Mast, who was in Afghanistan at the time and learned about Baby L.’s situation, “fought for the child’s rights to safety, medical treatment, and to not be turned over by the US to non-relatives in an objectively dangerous manner,” according to a court filing.

He and the DOD “demanded at a minimum a DNA test for any claimants and vetting for terrorist ties. The DoD was well aware [of] the risk that unrelated Taliban proxies would step forth as ‘uncles’ to try to claim the child.” At least six Afghans claimed to be family members of Baby L., but DNA tests proved otherwise.

“In Afghanistan and certainly among the Taliban, a baby girl is worth money – to sell off for child marriage – and more so for an unrelated baby girl,” according to the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), which is representing Joshua Mast’s brother and lawyer in the state case, Richard Mast.

Over the course of late 2019 and early 2020, and with his command’s knowledge, Mast worked with a Virginia court, the Virginia Department of Health, and the Virginia attorney general’s office to obtain a birth certificate for Baby L. and an Interlocutory Order of Adoption so she could be brought to the U.S., per the court filing.

“At the time, the State Department was desperately trying to negotiate a withdrawal agreement unilaterally with the Taliban,” according to AFLC. “The Taliban claimed there were no Al Qaeda present in Afghanistan at that time,” the law center added, which was a condition of the peace deal.

As the State Department became involved in the situation, Baby L. was transferred from DOD custody to John Doe’s father in February 2020. The Masts continued with the adoption process of Baby L.

“Evidence was presented that in spite of the many false claimants, U.S. Embassy Kabul dropped the DNA test requirement and caused the Masts’ daughter to be turned over to a non-relative, third-party Taliban proxy (who handed her off to ‘John Doe’), after two Afghan government agencies had recommended the little girl be sent to the U.S. to her U.S. guardian,” per AFLC.

“This was driven by the State Department’s desire to cut a deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops and to get rid of the ‘problem’ of this baby girl interfering with the State Department’s negotiations.”

"Responsible to the Taliban"

Later, in July 2021, the Taliban would not give permission for Baby L. to go to the U.S., after a request from the father of John Doe, who has claimed to be Baby L.'s uncle.

“John Doe admitted that his father was responsible to the Taliban for the child, and that the Taliban had denied permission for the child to go to America prior to the start of the historical evacuation,” according to the filing. “In addition, it is appalling that U.S. Embassy Kabul would fail to keep a U.S. Forces, Afghanistan (USFOR-A) commitment to DNA test any claimant when the former Afghan government expressly requested it.”

The Does disobeyed the Taliban, leading Mast to help evacuate them along with Baby L. from Afghanistan to Germany on the way to the U.S. Baby L. remained with the Does as they traveled to the U.S., where they arrived at Dulles International Airport on August 29, 2021. “John Doe was identified on the unclassified Biometrically Enabled [Terror] Watchlist (BEWL) upon his entry to the United States for a 2014 arms/explosives use,” according to the filing.

John Doe had repeatedly represented that "his father was responsible to the Taliban for the child," and stated "that he had many Taliban fighters in his phone when he brought the child to U.S. forces to be evacuated in 2021," per Richard Mast's court document.

As a result, the Masts, who have four sons, were given custody of Baby L. on Sept. 3, 2021. The Does now live in Texas.

“The US government has scrubbed John Doe’s BEWL entry, as it has scrubbed the terrorism records of multiple ‘refugees,’” according to a court filing from last August by Richard Mast. “John Doe’s BEWL screenshot cannot be released at this time, because of the federal protective order, but counsel for John Doe sent it to the US government (Richmond FBI Field Office) and still have copies of it, as revealed in federal discovery.”

This issue with BEWL is not limited to John Doe.

In August 2022, Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent a letter to the DOD acting inspector general, writing that a whistleblower alleged that “324 individuals evacuated from Afghanistan were allowed to enter the United States, despite appearing on the DoD’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist (BEWL).

“The BEWL—commonly known as ‘the watch list’—identifies individuals whose biometrics have been collected and determined by analysts to be threats or potential threats to national security, including known suspected terrorists (KST). This is in addition to the reportedly 65 individuals who are known to have entered the country without adequate vetting.”

"Never authorized"

Additionally, “it is alleged that personnel at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who work on vetting Afghan evacuees have been authorized to delete old biometric data, whenever they personally believed that such information is out of date,” according to the letter.

In the federal lawsuit against the Masts, the DOJ argued in January 2023 that “Federal Defendants admit … that Baby Doe is a citizen of Afghanistan with biological family in Afghanistan,” and that the “United States never authorized the Masts to initiate legal proceedings to gain custody of Baby Doe or adopt her, nor did the United States consent to these actions.”

However, as shown in court documents, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek J. Maurer signed a memo detailing that he was aware Mast obtained “sole legal custody” of Baby L. and a birth certificate for her, making her a DOD dependent who could receive military healthcare.

The DOS told CBS News in January 2023 that "reuniting the child with the family members in Afghanistan was the right thing to do," and the DOJ claimed that the Masts’ adoption of Baby L. violates Virginia law and conflicts with U.S. foreign policy interests.

The Departments of Justice and State didn’t provide comment by publishing time and the Department of Defense declined to comment.