Rep. Nancy Mace said she went to Israel to rescue a South Carolinian family and ended up bringing back a total of more than 150 Americans.
Ms. Mace, South Carolina Republican, said on X Thursday that she left Israel late Wednesday “on a rescue flight full of Americans.”
“I originally went to the Middle East because there was a South Carolina family who was stranded,” she wrote. “And because when your people are stranded in a war zone getting hit with missiles and rockets, the only answer worthy of the office — worthy of our country — is to get them out. I have not slept. Not eaten much. And seen things. I am grateful for every exhausting moment of it.”
She said, “There are those who govern from a distance — who weigh the optics or wait for the situation to resolve itself — and then there are those who get on a plane.”
“I am the person who has always gotten on the plane,” the lawmaker said. “The family I traveled here for are safely home. But then I learned about more families. Hundreds of families. Thousands. Still stranded. Whom Grey Bull Rescue and others are helping.”
Ms. Mace said she worked with the Grey Bull Rescue, a veteran-led, donor-funded rescue organization, that “has been evacuating Americans,” along with the U.S. State Department and the embassies of Jordan, Israel and Greece to get a plane to bring Americans back.
“This was their 808th mission,” she said of Grey Bull Rescue. “They got out 155 Americans yesterday, families with infants and students. They had the people but didn’t have the plane. I jumped in to get the plane.”
Bryan Stern, founder and chairman of Grey Bull Rescue, said his organization has rescued 591 Americans since the start of the war between the U.S., Israel and Iran.
“Families. Children. Babies. People who have spent weeks in bomb shelters praying for their very lives, listening to warning sirens, feeling the ground shake from impacts, and watching missiles fly overhead in an indiscriminate war zone where Iranian missiles prey on anything,” Mr. Stern said in a statement. “This is when Grey Bull Rescue goes to work. Grey Bull has rescued THOUSANDS from Iranian and Iranian-backed terrorists since 7 Oct [2023], then again in June 2025, and now again in this war.”
The U.S. issued a worldwide security alert on Feb. 28, the same day the first strikes were launched on Iran, according to the State Department website.
More than 43,000 American citizens have left the Middle East since the start of the war, the State Department has said. The department has also facilitated charter flights from the Middle East back to the U.S.
“Under President Trump and Secretary [Marco] Rubio’s leadership, the Department of State has completed more than three dozen charter flights and has safely evacuated thousands of Americans from the Middle East,” Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs Dylan Johnson wrote on X this week.
“While commercial flight availability across the region continues to improve, Department of State charter flights and ground transport operations will scale down as seats available on the Department’s charter options are significantly greater than the demand from Americans in the region,” he said.
