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Refugees From Across the Globe Get Jobs in New California Coffee Shop

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Refugees From Across the Globe Get Jobs in New California Coffee Shop

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Newsela | Refugee-staffed coffee shop in Calif. counters immigration backlash

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Nonprofit coffee shop in California staffed entirely by refugees, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

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After Fleeing Violence in Syria, the Refugees of Rap Find Home in France

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After Fleeing Violence in Syria, the Refugees of Rap Find Home in France

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Newsela | Refugees of Rap flee violence in Syria; now "the time for silence is over"

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The Refugees of Rap are Palestinian brothers who live in France after fleeing Syria, where they could have been jailed or killed for their songs. They rap in Arabic now, but are learning French.

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Refugees Feel at Home on U.S. Soccer Field

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Refugees Feel at Home on U.S. Soccer Field

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Newsela | Refugees realize their goal on U.S. soccer field

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Park is First DACA Student to Win a Rhodes Scholarship

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Park is First DACA Student to Win a Rhodes Scholarship

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Newsela | A "Dreamer's" dream come true: DACA student first to become a Rhodes scholar

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DACA college student makes history by winning the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, which provides tuition-free attendance at England's Oxford University.

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Biggest Challenge for Refugee Kids is Enrolling in School

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Biggest Challenge for Refugee Kids is Enrolling in School

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Newsela | Seeking safety, many refugee kids sacrifice education in new homeland

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Four million child refugees around the world do not attend school.

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U.S. Faces Shortage of Farmworkers Due to Fight Over Immigration

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U.S. Faces Shortage of Farmworkers Due to Fight Over Immigration

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Newsela | U.S. border crisis may hurt harvest, farmers say

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Over 20,000 farms employ more than 435,000 immigrant workers legally every year. And thousands more are employed illegally. Still, growers are facing a shortage of farmworkers.

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Many Africans Who Come to America Can't Find Jobs They Were Trained For

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Many Africans Who Come to America Can't Find Jobs They Were Trained For

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Newsela | Educated African immigrants have trouble landing good jobs in the U.S.

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Many highly educated professionals from Africa come to the U.S. after fleeing persecution and violence. They find barriers to landing jobs in their fields. Often, they must start over.

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On my second visit to the Ohio migrant camps with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), I'm reminded of the conversation I had earlier with Baldemar Velasquez, the founder and president of the organization. We drove 30 minutes south from their local office in Toledo, Ohio, to grower-owned housing in Woodville-where the roads grew muddier and the village more isolated from the rest of the city.

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Found Family: LGBTQ+ Immigrants Create Community Through Shared Experience

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Found Family: LGBTQ+ Immigrants Create Community Through Shared Experience

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Drawings featured on one of the walls of the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project's office. Several were created by detainees and sent to the organization from detention centers. Image by Adithi Ramakrishnan. United States, 2020.

Uchechukwu Onwa's welcome party upon his arrival to the United States consisted of a pair of shackles and slightly over two months in a detention center.

Onwa had been working for a nonprofit organization in Nigeria supporting healthcare services and advocacy for LGBTQ+ individuals. He had a visa to attend a conference in the United States and decided that he would seek asylum.

"Back home, I was constantly persecuted because of the work I was doing," Onwa said. "I was constantly violently and physically beaten up and abused to the point that I was almost killed by [an] angry mob."

But when he arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport at 5 am on May 13, 2017, he says he was stopped by immigration services and taken to the Atlanta City Detention Center.

"I didn't even know where we were going to," Onwa said. "The experience I had there [consists of] things that I really don't want to think about."

One in 10 LGBTQ+ adults is an immigrant, and a third of LGBTQ+ immigrants are undocumented, according to Funders for LGBTQ Issues, a network of institutions that provide philanthropic aid to LGBTQ causes and communities. Many LGBTQ+ immigrants seek asylum in the United States due to persecution in their home countries but are met with the harsh conditions in detention centers upon their arrival, advocates say.

"The interesting thing about LGBTQ+ and asylum seekers is that they have really strong claims, meaning that if they have proper representation, they almost always win their asylum cases," said Kristen Thompson, communications director at Immigration Equality, an organization providing legal aid to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers that has won asylum for over 1,000 LGBTQ+ individuals. "The fact that there are all these barriers to even entering asylum proceedings and getting representation is devastating, given the fact that if they could just get to asylum proceedings and find representation, they could win asylum protections in the U.S."

Kristen Thompson is Communications Director at Immigration Equality, an organization with both in-staff attorneys and a network of pro bono attorneys with the purpose of providing aid to LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. Image by Adithi Ramakrishnan. United States, 2020.

There are over 200 immigration detention centers currently in the United States, and 3 million individuals have spent time in a detention center over the past 10 years, according to Funders for LGBTQ Issues. Thompson elaborated on the conditions in detention centers and factors that make it more challenging for LGBTQ+ individuals being detained.

"The Center for American Progress reports that LGBTQ people are 97 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general immigration detention population," Thompson said. "We know that trans women in detention are mistreated in so many ways, from being referred to by their deadname-the name they were assigned at birth-instead of the name that they identify with."

According to Thompson, trans detainees also are often housed with other members of their sex and not their gender identity, making detention centers dangerous and leaving them vulnerable to harassment. Two trans women seeking asylum died nearly a year apart after having been in ICE custody. In 2018, Roxana Hernandez died approximately one week after she was taken to a hospital in New Mexico with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration and complications associated with HIV. In 2019, Johana Medina Leon died in a hospital in Texas four days after she was found unconscious in ICE custody.

"In gender-segregated facilities, [trans women] are often housed with the male population," Thompson said. "If they feel unsafe or face harassment, the only recourse is that ICE puts them in administrative segregation, meaning solitary confinement. The UN has said that solitary confinement is a form of torture, so they are harassed and face violence, or they are tortured."

Today, Onwa is one of the directors of the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, a New York-based organization that works to create a community of support for LGBTQ+ and HIV+ immigrants. He was released from detention on parole with support from LGBTQ+ organizations in the United States, as well as friends that he reached out to while detained. Once established in New York, he said he decided to continue dedicating his life to advocacy and helping other LGBTQ+ immigrants.

"I did advocacy work back home, so I thought about continuing that field," Onwa said. "This affected me, it impacted me, and I want to do something to change the system."

The Queer Detainee Empowerment Project has two main wings of service: its direct services program and its community organizing program. The direct services program targets LGBTQ+ individuals in immigration detention centers and coordinates visits to the centers to break the barrier of isolation and offer emotional support. It also involves a pen pal program during which organization members write letters to those in detention.

QDEP also connects detainees to other LGBTQ+ organizations in order to help move along their cases for asylum and connects clients with housing upon their release. As of early January 2020, the organization had hundreds of volunteers and was working with around 200 clients who were then in detention centers. At the same time, its hotline ran Monday to Friday from 11 am to 5 pm.

Aside from its direct support to LGBTQ+ detainees, QDEP holds weekly community meetings for its members, some of whom were previously held in detention facilities. Attendance at these meetings ranges between 25 and 35 individuals. The community meetings are an opportunity for QDEP's members to find a sense of community through shared experience. Due to COVID-19, these meetings are currently canceled until further notice, but the organization's hotline is still open during business hours.

"A big challenge for people, especially LGBTQ+ people most of all, is going through the experience in detention and being released-they don't know anybody [and have] no family, not friends," Onwa said. "[The community meetings] form a common network with other people, and make new friends, and share different issues that affect them."

QDEP member and community meeting attendee Aneiry Lopez came to her first QDEP meeting in hopes that being with other members of the LGBTQ+ community would help her mental health at a critical moment.

"I came here because I was in a depression because I was starting my transition as transgender and I didn't have any friends at that time," Lopez said. "When I found out about this organization, I came here, and I started talking and meeting people in the community. That helped me a lot."

Lopez moved to America from Honduras four years ago. She was initially a teacher in Honduras, but was fired when the school discovered she was gay.

"The school was saying the kids were going to copy my mannerisms," Lopez said. "I had a big problem trying to get another job. That's why I decided to migrate: in Honduras, being LGBTQ is not a crime, but you also have lots of problems for being yourself."

Shane Towler is a QDEP member who attends community meetings. He moved to the United States in April 2018 from Guyana. In Guyana, Towler experienced severe homophobia that made it challenging for him to come to terms with and embrace his identity.

"I was in the police force, so being gay was not accepted," Towler said. "I had to be this down low, in the closet type of person. The reason why I decided to come to America was because here I can be myself, and I don't have to be afraid to love a guy, or [a member of] my same sex."

Towler's mother passed away when he was young, but even from a young age, Towler feels she knew that he was gay.

"Before my mom died, she told my grandmother, she told everyone, that I was special," Towler said. "They always say that a mother knows their child, so I guess when my mom was saying that I was special, she was saying that I was different."

After spending several years in the United States, Towler feels that he is still going through the process of accepting himself-not because he doesn't know that he is gay, but because of the conditioning he experienced from growing up in a homophobic country.

"Most Caribbean countries like Jamaica, Guyana, and these places, you cannot accept yourself as being gay because these countries are colonial countries that carry lots against gay people," Towler said. "Because you cannot be your true self back home, it's hard for you to accept that you are a gay person unless you come out of that traumatic country and be in a country where you are free."

Lopez feels that her time with QDEP significantly improved her mental health. She recalls an affirming experience from her first time attending a meeting with the organization that made her feel at home.

"The day I came, they asked me for my preferred name and my preferred gender pronouns," Lopez said. "That was the first time that somebody asked me for it, and they've been so respectful of it. I felt like, okay, that's my house."

Drawings featured on one of the walls of the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project's office. Several were created by detainees and sent to the organization from detention centers. Image by Adithi Ramakrishnan. United States, 2020.

LGBTQ+ immigrants faced barriers to safe immigration and settlement in the United States prior to the Trump administration, but recent legislation has made it more challenging for asylum seekers to find refuge in America. In particular, the administration has changed its stance on affirmative immigration cases: cases in which individuals enter the country on a student or work visa and apply for asylum once they have arrived.

"It's always urgent, but it's particularly dangerous for our clients right now and it just continues to get worse," Thompson said. "The administration put a freeze on processing [affirmative] asylum applications, and so now there are over 900,000 people waiting in this backlog."

QDEP's community organizing program, the second leg of its services, centers on empowering its members to become leaders and take initiative when it comes to dismantling systems of oppression and advocating for immigration reform.

"We believe that folks that are affected by an issue are in a better position to make a change for that issue," Onwa said. "We want our members to be able to advocate for themselves and to be leaders within their community."

Due to COVID-19, the program is currently holding fundraising efforts to provide materials including antibacterial soap and food to its members in and out of detention centers and communicating information to its members regarding the virus.

Two other barriers to immigration erected by the Trump administration include a quota at ports of entry-meaning that only a certain number of asylum seekers are let in at the border per day-and the requirement that asylum seekers wait in their home countries while their cases are processed.

The administration is also trying to work with Central American countries to make it more challenging for Central American immigrants to successfully seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Since 90 percent of LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers reported experiencing sexual and gender-based violence in their Central American home countries, according to a 2016 UNHCR study, these regulations impact LGBTQ immigrants' search for a safe life.

"The administration is working with countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to try to establish them as 'safe countries,' so they can say: before you apply, if you have passed through a safe country, you have to apply to and be rejected for asylum in that country before you can apply at the U.S.-Mexico border," Thompson said. "That's incredibly problematic because those countries aren't at all safe for LGBTQ people. In fact, they rank among the highest rates of trans deaths and homicides in the entire world; it's preposterous to deport people to countries where they are unsafe."

Onwa wants to give QDEP's members the skills and resources to take action within their communities to amplify the conversation about LGBTQ+ immigrants' rights.

"We are working towards giving our members the tools to be able to lead campaigns and launch their own campaigns," Onwa said.

Towler helps make placards, finalize attendance, and coordinate transportation for QDEP protests and demonstrations. Towler is passionate about using his position in QDEP to represent the needs of LGBTQ immigrants.

"I need to speak out more because I like to do public speaking," Towler said. "I like to talk a lot, but because of fear, I haven't been speaking that much."

Adama Kanazoe, another QDEP member, sought asylum in the United States from Burkina Faso in 2014. He attends QDEP's weekly meetings and has also been the organization's chef for the past six months.

"They're helping people [here], and for me, it's like a training for how I can help people too," Kanazoe said. "We are so different but at the same time, we share the same thing, and we love each other like we are from the same mother."

Kanazoe has been cooking for almost 20 years. He opened his own catering business, Oze Cuisine, in May 2019 and cooks dinner for QDEP's weekly community meetings. He tries to make foods from different cultures in order to capture the diversity of the immigrant community at the meetings. So far, he has made foods from African, Mexican-American, Italian, and French cuisines.

"For me, it's a challenge; any dish I make I'm always scared, are people going to like it?" Kanazoe said. "I want my people always to be happy. Cooking, for me, is fun, and it's a power of connection, because around food, a lot of things can happen."

Onwa still faces trauma from his experiences in detention but is passionate about advocating for other individuals in similar situations and creating a community for change through QDEP.

"It hasn't been easy, but at least I'm out, I'm here now," Onwa said. "I'm with other people that are like me, and I can live my life."

For Towler, and many others, simply finding an LGBTQ+ friendly family in a new place has provided a sense of comfort.

"It's meant a lot to know that you are not alone, that there's other people there with you," Towler said. "You feel that you are not alone in suffering, you are not alone carrying that burden or that pain. There are other people with you [who] also have that pain and that burden, and they are willing to share it."

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Found Family: LGBTQ+ Immigrants Create Community Through Shared Experience

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Found Family: LGBTQ+ Immigrants Create Community Through Shared Experience. Uchechukwu Onwa's welcome party upon his arrival to the United States consisted of a pair of shackles and slightly over two months in a detention center.Onwa had been working for a nonprofit...

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'Gayropa': Challenges and Hopes of Europe's LGBT+ Refugees – in Pictures

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'Gayropa': Challenges and Hopes of Europe's LGBT+ Refugees – in Pictures

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Igor in Besançon, France. Image by Bradley Secker. France, 2020.

"Gayropa" is a disparaging name often used by Russian conservatives and officials to refer to Europe, signifying both a lack of acceptance towards LGBTQ+ people, and a perceived separation between east and west in terms of attitudes towards LGBTQ+ rights.

Polarising as our current world may be, this project documents the unity and togetherness of LGBTQ+ people from around the world, who have made, and are making, new lives and communities of their own across the continent. These people are the opposite of victims, and they use their strength to move their lives forward, redefining the term "Gayropa" as they do so.

Many of those photographed have also faced discrimination in exile: xenophobia and racism from host societies (including the LGBTQ+ community), and homophobia and transphobia from fellow asylum seekers and the local population. Some steer clear of others from their own countries, as they find themselves fighting similar issues to the ones they thought they had left behind.

According to the Refugee Council, a leading UK charity, refugees are five times more likely to have mental health support needs than the average British population, and 61% of asylum seekers experience serious mental distress.

Coming to terms with one's sexuality is a slow process.

For individuals coming to realise their sexuality or gender identity in hostile environments, the pressure can push them to breaking point.

LGBTQ+ people who grow up in hostile environments, where threats to their safety can stem from family members, authorities, religious communities, violent non-state actors, or a mixture of several of these, face particular - and heightened - threats to their psychological wellbeing.

This, coupled with the challenges of being an asylum seeker in a new country - having to learn a new language, adapting to a new society, finding a community - means a need for increased mental health support.

In some of Europe's most open and liberal cities, LGBTQ+ arrivals from across the world sometimes end up engaging in self-abusive behaviour. This can range from excessive drinking and unprotected sex to the more extreme behaviour, where migrants engage in sex work, sometimes called "survival sex", or become the play things of predatory older men looking to exploit their vulnerable mental and legal status.

Amid a rise of violent homophobic attacks in the UK and increasing nationalism and xenophobia across the rest of Europe, LGBTQ+ refugees want "Gayropa" to live up to its name, in the fullest and most positive sense of the word. Between 2014-15 and 2018-19 recorded hate crimes relating to sexual orientation across England and Wales skyrocketed from 5,591 to 14,491 - a rise of 160%.

Originally from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Mir was a prominent member of the gay community. After the brutal murders of his boyfriend and colleague in Dhaka, claimed by Isis, Mir and others from his social and work circles went underground. He claimed political asylum in Stockholm, Sweden, which was finally granted 18 months later. Image by Bradley Secker. Sweden, 2020.

Some like Hamoudi, Mir and Faris come from countries where their sexuality is criminalised, and others like Igor and Sergi grew up in places where homophobia has become an increasingly political topic in recent years. Bella, Komil and Khusen are from countries where being LGBTQ+ isn't criminalised, but where social stigma means they continue to face threats to their lives. For others like Wael, Europe offers the means to change his legal gender and continue his life back home eventually.

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'Gayropa': Challenges and Hopes of Europe's LGBT+ Refugees - in Pictures

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'Gayropa': Challenges and Hopes of Europe's LGBT+ Refugees - in Pictures. "Gayropa" is a disparaging name often used by Russian conservatives and officials to refer to Europe, signifying both a lack of acceptance towards LGBTQ+ people, and a perceived separation between...

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'Our Work Is Helping People Find Happiness.' Meet the Nuns Helping Migrants at the U.S.-Mexico Border

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'Our Work Is Helping People Find Happiness.' Meet the Nuns Helping Migrants at the U.S.-Mexico Border

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Sister Maria Antonia Aranda and a migrant woman from Cuba conferring outside a church in Juárez, Mexico in August 2019. Image by Lily Moore-Eissenberg. Mexico, 2019.

On a sweltering morning in August, Sister Maria Antonia Aranda, a 60-year-old nun from Mexico, navigated her silver Ford Escape into a border checkpoint in Ciudad Juárez. She was dropping off two asylum-seekers who had hearings across the border that day, at the federal immigration court in El Paso. Fatima Rodriguez, a 19-year-old from Nicaragua who had been separated from her 5-year-old daughter by American authorities, anxiously texted her lawyer from the passenger seat. Her companion, a Salvadoran woman in her early 20s, sat in the back seat, adjusting and re-adjusting her waist-length hair. Her eyelids shone with silver glitter, a special touch for the occasion.

After Aranda parked, they all paused for a moment, as if to draw a collective breath. Then, at Aranda's signal, they got out, walked to the entrance of the Lerdo International Bridge, and kissed each other's cheeks. Aranda watched as the two young women each fed ten pesos-fifty American cents, the toll to cross by foot-into a turnstile. Within seconds, they disappeared into the crush of pedestrians bound for the U.S. Aranda hoped to God she would never see them again.

Over the past three years, priests, bishops, and Pope Francis have condemned U.S. immigration policy under the Trump Administration and entreated Catholics around the world to stand up for the rights of migrants. But along the U.S.-Mexico border, it's women like Aranda-Catholic nuns, most of them middle-aged or elderly and many of them first- or second-generation Americans-who have actually built a mass movement.

Sister Maria Antonia Aranda in the Juárez church where she works with migrants. Image by Lily Moore-Eissenberg. Mexico, 2019.

It began in the summer and fall of 2018, when the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an association of American nuns, publicized requests for volunteers and financial support-a "call to the border," as many sisters describe it. Since then, more than 700 nuns from the organization's 300 member congregations have volunteered their services, some traveling hundreds of miles to join sisters who already lived in border towns. Most of this new influx of nuns began work on the U.S. side of the border-in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California-but others, like Aranda, are scattered from Mexico to Honduras. And that's only counting nuns whose congregations are American and LCWR members.

Nuns now occupy major leadership positions on the border: Sister Norma Pimentel, who has gained national recognition for her immigration advocacy, directs Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and an Irish nun named Beatrice Donnellan runs a shelter for migrant women in El Paso. Some of the sisters have arrived at the border with no previous experience in immigration work, while others have already devoted their lives to it. Sister Gloria Rivera, a Detroit-based nun from Mexico, served as a translator in immigration court and directed a migrant shelter in Michigan before traveling to El Paso to volunteer in January 2019. The nuns' congregations fund their travels largely on donations. Since the summer of 2018, congregations have given more than 1.5 million dollars to immigration-related nonprofits, according to the LCWR.

"The fact that these sisters are joining other members of their order, or other people with whom they're networked, means they're more able to avoid the pitfalls of the ignorant do-gooder," said Eileen Markey, author of A Radical Faith, a biography on the political transformation of nuns in Latin America. "They're connected to people who are embedded and who have a long-term perspective. In many cases, they have backgrounds in Central America or on the border." She added, "In some ways, it's like a return."

Sister Beatrice Donnellan talks with a pair of visitors dropping off donations at Casa Vides in El Paso, Texas in August 2019. Image by Lily Moore-Eissenberg. United States, 2019.

Many of the nuns working at the border today are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. They bring a work ethic and philosophy shaped by their own experiences living under Central American dictatorships in the 1980s, when more than a million Central Americans fleeing civil wars in the Northern Triangle sought refuge in the U.S. At the time, hundreds of nuns were living in the conflict zones and sheltering refugees who had been denied asylum by the Reagan administration. The so-called sanctuary movement of the 1980s and today's religious movement to support migrant rights at the U.S. border are similar, says Amanda Izzo, a professor at Saint Louis University who studies religious feminism and liberal Christianity. "Both come out of the same impulse: people groping towards critiques of structural forms of power," she says. "It's small groups of people in impoverished places thinking about what the stories of the Gospel can mean in the context of their lives."

In 2018 and 2019, waves of Catholic sisters showed up in Juárez and El Paso, bringing laundry detergent, baby wipes, duffel bags of second-hand clothes, and a powerful concept of what it means to serve God: Catholic liberation theology. The

strand of Catholicism first bloomed in Latin America under the dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s and has enjoyed a resurgence since Pope Francis, a follower of liberation theology, became the first Latino pope in 2013. The philosophy, which encourages a broad-based, deeply historical understanding of modern problems, advocates for radical egalitarianism and the liberation of the poor from oppressive political and economic systems.

Nuns have traditionally enjoyed very little formal power in the Catholic Church-they are not allowed to become priests and are excluded from most leadership roles. But they have became some of Catholicism's most vigorous, progressive, and accessible representatives on the ground. "Women religious do not have the authority that men do in the church," said Izzo, the Saint Louis University professor, but "they've carved out these places of autonomy." For nuns who follow liberation theology, economic and social equality have become priorities on par with religious conversion and worship.

"They are radicalized because of their experiences," said Margaret McGuinness, a professor at La Salle University who studies the history of American nuns. "They're not just saying 'Let's help the poor,' but 'Why are these people poor?'"

For many nuns, the most important answer to that question is neither Central American gang violence nor the Trump administration's immigration policies. Their answer, derived from decades of experience, tends to be more historical: people are poor because of systemic inequalities between groups, states, and hemispheres. Sister Beatrice Donnellan argues that American economic interests and military interventions in Latin America in the 1980s are chiefly responsible for the economic and political instability driving migration to the U.S. today. Aranda often cites the Bible: "Starting from Genesis, we're talking about migration, no? The people of Israel, the Hebrews, they walked through the desert," she said. "We can talk about Leviticus, who invites us not to oppress foreigners. Matthew speaks of love for the needy. 'I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you stayed with me.'"

Sister Caroline Sweeney, a volunteer, makes calls to the families of recent arrivals in Casa Vides in El Paso, Texas in August 2019. Image by Lily Moore-Eissenberg. United States, 2019.

A former engineer, Aranda decided to become a nun in her 40s. She took her final religious vows at age 50 and expected to spend the rest of her life tending to the needs of her local community-working with couples on their marriages, teaching children to read biblical stories into their own experiences, leading a humble and just life in accordance with the egalitarian values of liberation theology. But then, last January, Aranda heard that a local priest named Francisco García had begun taking in migrants under the newly-implemented Migrant Protection Protocols, also called the "Remain in Mexico" policy. She drove to the church to offer help.

Even at that point, the church's capacity to house migrants was stretched, and García was beginning to feel overwhelmed. While the local community supported the migrants, they also needed the church to perform baptisms, communions, weddings, funerals, and weekly services. The congregation needed its priest, so García asked Aranda to help care for the couple dozen migrants already living in his church, particularly the women, who feared for their safety on the streets. Aranda accepted, not yet fully grasping what that meant. Between January and August, the migrant population in Juárez swelled from a couple hundred people to more than ten thousand, and Aranda was swamped. She began spending her days shuttling migrants to and from medical appointments, law offices, and border checkpoints, eventually earning the nickname Hermana Uber.

"It's distressing to not have the human and material resources to assist them all," Aranda says, speaking in Spanish. "More than tiredness, though, is a feeling of despair, anguish, helplessness because of the failure of governments to negotiate better immigration policies." Recently, she has observed an increase in migrants from southern Mexico as well as from Central America, putting additional strain on the city's shelters. "But knowing that the migrants are joining their families is always a great joy and satisfaction," she added. "Knowing that, in some way, our work is helping other people find happiness."

Many of the women that Aranda works with have faced gender-based violence in their home countries. Since 2018, when the Justice Department eliminated domestic and gang violence as grounds for asylum-a decision that disproportionately affected women-the rate of asylum approvals for Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala plummeted by nearly ten percentage points, according to the advocacy organization Human Rights First. When migrant women arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border, many are then forced to remain in Juárez, a city known for femicide. In 2015, at the peak of the violence, an average of six women were killed each day in Juárez, and the United Nations called the femicide a "pandemic."

The day before she dropped off Fatima Rodriguez at the border, Aranda found her in a small meeting house beside the church, sitting with a friend on benches painted the color of robin eggs. "Hola, Madre," Rodriguez said, addressing the nun with a traditional term of respect-"Mother"-that the equality-minded Aranda has never gotten used to.

San Juan Apostol Evangelista church, where Sister Maria Antonia Aranda works, doubles as a migrant shelter in Juárez, see here in August 2019. Image by Lily Moore-Eissenberg. Mexico, 2019.

Rodriguez, an activist, fled political violence in Nicaragua after the government started arresting and killing college students like herself for protesting. American authorities separated Rodriguez from her daughter in May because Rodriguez's parents' names, not her own, were listed on her daughter's birth certificate, she explains. (When Rodriguez was a teenager, the family made this arrangement for her protection, after she became pregnant as a result of a rape, she says.) When she arrived at the border, U.S. officials sent her daughter to a shelter and then a foster family in New York City, and returned Rodriguez to Mexico, she says.

Rodriguez was one of the earliest arrivals at the church, which regularly houses people from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Cuba. She quickly learned how to navigate the politics of floor space and food. In group therapy sessions, led by a psychologist Aranda recruited, she held ice in her hands until it melted in order to build psychological endurance and practice calming her mind. She narrated her traumas often, for American journalists Aranda brought to the shelter and for an American judge in El Paso. She drank cheap soda and texted her family from the blue benches.

Rodriguez's story ends more happily than most of the stories Aranda steps into. With the help of a lawyer that Aranda knew, Rodriguez proved that she was her daughter's mother, and a U.S. immigration court judge decided to allow her to wait in the U.S. with her daughter for her asylum hearing.

A few days after Aranda dropped Rodriguez at the border, over a breakfast of salted avocados and hard-boiled eggs, Aranda played a song on the guitar called El Puente, or The Bridge. "Never mind that the pain of a thousand footsteps leaves bloody footprints on it...Lord, make that bridge not break," she sang, in Spanish. She told me, "Any people can be like the people of Israel. Any person, too, who walks through the desert looking for a better life."

A week later, Aranda heard the news from one of the secretaries at the shelter: Rodriguez had made it to New York City.

"I only ask God to continue helping her," Aranda told me. As for the thousands of others still waiting to cross the border: "They speak of leaving a place where they were stripped of their homes and where their relatives were killed," Aranda said. "They no longer speak of the American dream."

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'Our Work Is Helping People Find Happiness.' Meet the Nuns Helping Migrants at the U.S.-Mexico Border

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'Our Work Is Helping People Find Happiness.' Meet the Nuns Helping Migrants at the U.S.-Mexico Border. On a sweltering morning in August, Sister Maria Antonia Aranda, a 60-year-old nun from Mexico, navigated her silver Ford Escape into a border checkpoint in Ciudad Juárez. She was dropping off two...

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Coming to America: It's Not Like the Movie

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Coming to America: It's Not Like the Movie

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Abdi Nor Iftin in front of the U.S. flag. Image by Leo Hornak. United States.

Democracy, liberty, freedom, equality-these are the fundamental tenets Abdi Nor Iftin hoped would shape his life in America, after leaving Kenya. Upon miraculously winning a direct entryway into the United States via the annual visa lottery, Somali-born Iftin was rapturous over the chance to pursue his piece of the American dream: officially leave war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, and acquire stable funds to send back to his family. Only 50,000, out of 22.4 million applicants a year, received a visa through the lottery process. What he didn't realize is that being one of the lucky few and becoming an American, particularly a Black American, comes with caveats, some more dangerous than others.

"Once I came here I was so sad and disappointed to know that my American dream had been betrayed by the reality of America," Iftin said.

When Iftin recounted his altered take on the American experience after his first year in the U.S., his voice was riddled with disillusionment and coated in sadness.

"America has treated African Americans so terribly. People are suffering, people can't receive an education. Young African American men are incarcerated, particularly here in Maine-the whitest state in America. It's traumatizing to see," he said.

It didn't take long for Iftin to realize that race was a singular and defining aspect of American culture. At customs, Iftin was asked, via a form, a seemingly simple, but rather nuanced, question: "What is your race?" When presented with the solitary option of Black/African American, it dawned on Iftin that his identity was now reduced to a lone, superficial factor-the color of his skin. He claimed that this initial interaction with America's simplification of race was transformational.

"You have nothing else to choose to identify yourself. You're given a tag and a new identity. That has been my struggle for the last six years." His voice trailed off, and he then said, "after that a different type of freedom was lost."

View of central Yarmouth from a bridge overlooking Main Street. Image by Francesca Bentley. United States, 2020.

Introduction to Life in Yarmouth, Maine

Iftin engaged in an age-old problematic practice during his first few transitionary days to life in Yarmouth, Maine-a small, traditional, yet upscale New England town. He made the obligatory introduction and hellos to white neighbors upon move-in day with the intention of easing their fears and assuring them that he did not fit their stereotypical perception of a dangerous Black person. The Somali native said he thought this measure would be especially prudent as two days prior to the beginning of his new American life, 18-year-old Michael Brown had been fatally shot in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer; the officer was not charged.

Fearful of succumbing to a similar fate, Iftin did what he thought was best, as a lone Black man on a six-mile-long road of white houses and equally white families. In a joking, yet somber tone, he said, "You know I had to knock on doors, and say, 'Hey, I live in that house so if you see me around doing things please don't assume I'm a burglar and call 911.'"

Iftin said he felt the weight of having to partake in such a regressive exchange, adding, "It was positive because nothing happened. But it was mostly negative because of the whole idea that I had to present myself because I was a Black man. And that was my introduction to the United States of America."

The American Immigration Council reports that more than 47,000 immigrants (4 percent of the total population) call Maine home. Although, the exact total number of refugees-people who have been displaced from their native country due to war, persecution, and other forms of unrest-and asylum seekers-individuals also fleeing unrest but who apply for international protection upon arrival to another country-in Maine currently is unknown. The Office of Refugee Resettlement estimates that 941 refugees relocated to Maine between 2011 and 2014. According to Dr. Robert Glover, an immigration politics professor at the University of Maine, the state's foreign-born resident population has expanded by 21.8 percent over the span of 13 years, with communities such as Lewiston, Maine, now including more than 5,000 Somali refugees. Glover further explained that most refugees/asylum seekers commonly originate from Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, the DRC, and Djibouti, Africa.

Alongside Iftin's growing understanding of American life as an immigrant is his growing conceptualization of the evils of race in America. As a minute portion of Maine's greater population, a Black person is only afforded so much comfortability in a space so white. According to last year's U.S. census, 94.4 percent of Maine's 1.3 million population is white, and 1.7 percent is Black/African American.

Iftin said although he enjoys driving places and exploring the natural beauty Maine has to offer, "the police always seem to have their eyes on you, you feel like something's lurking around you. There is this feeling in this state particularly manufactured by the former governor, (Paul) LePage, who was able to spread false information about Black people. He said they're coming here to rape white women, they're bringing drugs. And I'm unfortunately not making this stuff up."

Iftin was recalling the then-Republican governor's disturbing claims in 2016. With a glaring similarity to President Trump's racist rhetoric, LePage's two terms in office were abundant with racially charged misinformation. As reported by mainstream news media at the time, the governor implied that Black people were at fault for Maine's struggles with elevated heroin usage, and alleged that drug dealers named "D-Money, Smoothie, and Shifty" were facilitating Mainers' access to heroin and impregnating "young, white girls" in the process. According to The Atlantic, LePage's representative claimed that " the governor is not making comments about race." However, The Atlantic also underlined that such a statement was weakly merited as the governor specifically mentioned impregnating "young, white girls."

Maine's current Democratic governor, Janet Mills, has espoused an active willingness to dismantle Maine's systemic racism. Since taking office in 2019, Mills has met with students of color to hear what they believe Maine's government can do to combat racial discrimination and has passed legislation that prohibits arrests that are the product of racial-based profiling.

Upon being asked for comment regarding plans to further ensure the safety and equity of Black Mainers, the governor responded, "It has always been my goal to ensure that Maine is a safe place where all people have an equal and fair shot at success. For too many, especially people of color, that promise is too distant, and this pandemic has laid bare the deep-seated inequities and racism in our society. I do not have all the answers to the longstanding, systemic problem of racism, but I am committed to learning and improving our state in the months and years to come."

Although the new governor's platform is more inclusive, the discriminatory sentiments, which LePage promulgated, continue to hang over Mainers and weigh heavily on those whom he targeted, Iftin noted. During an interview with Maine Public Radio in 2018, LePage declared that if Mills pushes Maine in a direction he does not agree with, "he'll return four years from now to challenge her."

However, not all Black Mainers feel equally sobered by this reality.

Panbo Boris sitting on the porch of his home in Yarmouth. Image by Francesca Bentley. United States, 2020.

Varying Perspectives

Maine is home to Black immigrants and asylum seekers/refugees who view racism in Maine, and America at large, in varying lights. Panbo Boris, a Gabon, Central Africa, native, recently made the journey from Morocco to Yarmouth, Maine, seeking asylum in 2019. He described his initial perception of the people of Yarmouth as "friendly, compassionate, helpful. And wanting to help migrants." He painted the town very attractively and said he has had nothing short of welcoming encounters. When asked about his thoughts and feelings surrounding Black Lives Matter (BLM), Boris expressed that at the outset he felt scared after watching what happened to George Floyd, a Black man, earlier this year, and that the police should not only act as oppressors. Floyd died, handcuffed, after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes in Minneapolis. However, Boris spoke of Floyd's death and police brutality very abstractly. Later, hementioned that white people, too, are being brutalized by police.

Encountering racism firsthand can fundamentally shape one's views. Yves Nkurunziza, an immigrant from Rwanda, says he has faced massive discrimination since coming to Maine. Four years after arriving, Nkurunziza was arrested in Portland, 12 miles from Yarmouth, after an unknown person called the police claiming he was "too loud." Although the charges were eventually dismissed, the experience was demoralizing.

"I've never ever been to jail. The first time I've ever been to jail is in America," Nkurunziza claimed. "In Africa we don't study the truth about race in America. When we studied American history in class they told us that racism was done after Martin Luther King. They said life has changed-it's paradise." Not only was Nkurunziza unprepared for the inequality in America, but it was worse than what he could have ever anticipated. He declared, "I support BLM 100 percent."

A Disconnect

Iftin, who wrote the memoir Call Me American, which describes his life in Somalia and his journey to becoming an American citizen, is not surprised by the weak grasp some refugees and immigrants have on race in America. "Race and racism is such a foreign idea to those of us who come here," he says. "America doesn't give credit to how slavery has built this country. There's a lot of things I didn't know, so I had to read books to pick up these pieces."

The church that acted as a gathering place for a community-based Black Lives Matter protest. Image by Francesca Bentley. United States, 2020.

Without tangible confrontations with racism, it can be difficult for those entering American society without contextual knowledge of how racism functions in America to comprehend its existence and adverse implications.

"It's so hard for these people [immigrants] to get an idea of what's going on. So if you haven't experienced it you can just ignore it, and that's the problem here."

To make matters worse, there seems to be a substantial gap between older Black immigrants and native Black Americans. Iftin explained that some immigrant Somali parents perceive BLM as a purely African American issue, that doesn't involve them.

Although Iftin admitted that Yarmouth is one of the more progressive towns in Maine and has welcomed Black immigrants throughout the years, he remains wary of its authenticity. He used a community-based BLM protest in front of a local church as an example. Yarmouth's residents equal nearly 8,500, yet fewer than 100 people attended the protest, with half of the protesters coming from other nearby towns.

"I don't really know how receptive Yarmouth truly is," Iftin said. "I think these days it's kind of a game where people have BLM signs outside like 'hey look at me; I'm a part of it.' I'm not trying to generalize or anything, but sometimes that's how I feel."

A Black Lives Matter sign in front of a Yarmouth resident's white-picket-fenced yard. Image by Francesca Bentley. United States, 2020.

Moving Forward

Iftin said that there still remains a massive disconnect between Black Americans and Black migrants and asserted that bridging such a lacuna would be highly beneficial and subsequently help Black migrants get in touch with Black America and its concerns, and assist Black Americans in recognizing the plights migrants face getting to America and resettling.

Iftin's comments revealed that America may be beguiling Black immigrants. "I'm telling you all of this, because this is not America, this is not the America I expected."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coming to America: It's Not Like the Movie

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Democracy, liberty, freedom, equality-these are the fundamental tenets Abdi Nor Iftin hoped would shape his life in America, after leaving Kenya. Upon miraculously winning a direct entryway into the United States via the annual visa lottery, Somali-born Iftin was rapturous over the chance to pursue his piece of the American dream: officially leave war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, and acquire stable funds to send back to his family.

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The ongoing crises in the Middle East have uprooted millions of people, yet new technology allows them to keep connected to their home communities and loved ones in unprecedented ways. The smartphone has become the essential travel companion of the 21st century refugee. Apps help migrants navigate through unfamiliar lands, stay in touch with their family and friends, contact smugglers, and even document their daily lives with selfies and posts to Instagram.

How does a refugee's life in exile differ from his or her presence online? How does their portrayal of themselves differ from how they are depicted in the Western media?

Inspired by an Augmented Reality app that layers the smartphone camera view with nearby social media posts, van Houtryve reveals the digital traces of refugees that have been geo-tagged to a specific place. He set out on the refugee trail through Europe following the digital breadcrumbs left by these connected migrants, capturing the intersection of their online identities and places of exile.

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The ongoing crises in the Middle East have uprooted millions of people, yet new technology allows them to keep connected to their home communities and loved ones in unprecedented ways. The smartphone has become the essential travel companion of the 21st century refugee.