For Syrian refugee in Houston, feeling of safety stripped away
Politicians who seek to block arrivals confuse victims with attackers, he says
His wife serves traditional Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom as the family’s three young boys argue about which of them speaks the most English and squirm on a couch in their modest two-bedroom apartment in southwest Houston. They sit across from their oldest sibling, a 13-year-old girl who is blind and handicapped.
His name is Maher — he asked that his last name be withheld to protect family back in Syria. He and his family arrived in Houston five months ago as refugees, seven of the 90 Syrians resettled in Greater Houston during fiscal year 2015, according to State Department data.
The feeling of safety Maher said he’s felt since he set foot in the United States vanished last week as he
watched the news, with dozens of governors across the country saying they did not want Syrian refugees in their states.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he intends to block new Syrian resettlement and to monitor those already in Texas, and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed previously that he would send Syrian refugees already in the United States back to Syria.
Houston’s rank as the country’s No. 1 destination for Syrian refugees is some small consolation to Maher and his family. Like Maher’s clan, most resettled Syrians are women and children. Seventy percent of the 1,682 who arrived in the United States from October 2014 through this September were women and children under 14. Syrians accounted for about 2.5 percent of the nearly 70,000 refugees settled across 48 states and the District of Columbia.
Victims, too, of Islamic State
Maher said he can’t help feeling that the politicians taking stands against Syrian refugees are confusing the victims with the perpetrators of last week’s bloody attacks in Paris by Islamic State terrorists.
He drew an analogy to a report on the evening news about a murder in Houston. Would it be right, he asked, to assume that all Houstonians are murderers? Or if one student at a school misbehaved, should the entire school be punished?
Like the victims of the Paris attacks, he said, Syrian civilians suffer because of the Islamic State.
“We were the first people who ran away because of those things,” he said.
The surge of opponents to President Barack Obama’s plan for accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees next year worries Maher, because he hopes to reunite with his elderly mother, who has taken refuge in Saudi Arabia.
He also worries about his brother’s family still in Syria; whenever a call comes from an international number, he fears bad news.
“Now I don’t have any hope,” he said through translator Chalak Qahrman, an employment case manager at the nonprofit Refugee Services of Texas.
Sara Kauffman, Houston-area director for the organization, said many of her Syrian clients share Mehar’s fears.
“Does this mean you’re not going to allow any of our family to come here?” she said they ask her. “It’s a big deal, to think that you might not see your family again.”
During an interview at the refugee agency office and later a visit at his apartment on Thursday, Maher spoke quickly. In the agency office, his knees bounced and his sandaled feet tapped against the floor. At home, he tried to play and joke with his children to shield them from his concerns, but his anxiety became apparent when he spoke out of their earshot.
“Now I’m afraid the government will send me back there,” he said.
For Maher, “back there” means Irbin, a small city a few miles from the Syrian capital of Damascus, the stronghold of President Bashar Assad. Violence broke out in Irbin in September 2011 after government forces attacked anti-Assad demonstrations. What began as isolated skirmishes blossomed into a civil war.
In Irbin, he said, his family was caught in a crossfire of rockets, bombs and shells from both government and rebel forces.
“A lot of times, I was kept awake for two or three days,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid for my children.”
Maher and his family sought safety in two other parts of Damascus, he said, but the violence followed them as the civil war expanded. His family fled Syria for Egypt on Jan. 8, 2013.
Rigorous screening
When Maher’s family arrived in Egypt, he said, the Islamic State had yet to start. The group originated in neighboring Iraq and did not formally expand into Syria until April 2013.
Maher’s family members remained in Egypt for more than two years before they were granted refugee status in Houston in June after undergoing extensive background checks.
Maher said he did seven interviews in Egypt while applying to the U.S. refugee program, most of which lasted over three hours. Federal interviewers asked him about his grandfathers and his wife’s cousins to confirm his identity. They grilled him about specific events in the cities where he spent time to confirm his path to Egypt.
According to State Depart- ment officials, the vetting process for potential refugees is “the most rigorous screening and security vetting of any category of traveler to the United States,” including fingerprint and full biographic background checks.
In addition, Syrian refugees are subject to further screenings called the Syria Enhanced Review. Refugee specialists with access to classified information review the files before the inperson interviews and develop specific questions to test a refugee’s story.
Maher said his interviewers asked for the same details multiple times, as if they were trying to get him to give a wrong answer.
“I thought that they were living with me in the same cities,” he said. “How do they know those places?”
When he finally made it to Houston, in hot and muggy June, he immediately felt safe. For the first time since violence broke out in Syria in September 2011, he said, he did not fear for the safety of his wife and children.
Since arriving, he has found work as a handyman, started English classes, and gotten a Texas driver’s license. His children enrolled in school and quickly began learning English; the oldest son even has even picked up some Spanish from neighbors in their apartment complex.
Maher said he has also met many welcoming American volunteers who helped prepare his apartment, invited his family over for dinner and hosted events like an early Thanksgiving.
Last week’s debate over Syr- ian refugees has stoked interest among Houstonians in volunteering to help with refugees, said Kauffman of Refugee Services of Texas. Ali Al Sudani of Interfaith Ministries, another resettlement agency in Houston, said the media attention also has led to an “uptick” in volunteer interest.
“I know the Texans who call us each day are very much wanting to help refugees. … They understand that they’re fleeing the violence like that in Paris,” Kauffman said.
Supporters speak out
Mayor Annise Parker also characterized Houston as supportive of refugees.
“Houston, and Texas, have always been welcoming to those in need,” the mayor said in an emailed statement. “It is unfortunate that Texas wants to turn its back on the refugees.”
Houston-area Christian leaders of several denominations published an open letter Friday calling on the governor to preserve funding for refugee resettlement.
“Our scriptures and many other faith traditions have as a central and prominent tenet the welcome of the stranger, the foreigner, and the immigrant,” they wrote.
For Maher, that welcome suddenly feels uncertain. When he was young, he said, he watched American films and thought of one day visiting the U.S.
“It was a dream to come to America,” he said. This week, though, “I feel like they woke me up from a dream.”