Refugees striving to help families
Afghans in San Antonio aim to get loved ones back home evacuated
SAN ANTONIO — When the last U.S. troops leave Kabul this week, Afghans who’ve resettled in this city fear a bloodbath of retribution by their country’s victorious new rulers against supporters of the collapsed government — including anyone who helped Americans or their allies during 20 years of war.
In the two weeks after the Taliban took the capital, the resettled Afghans flooded the Center for Refugee Services with desperate phone calls and lined up at its small office, trying to arrange for the safe evacuation of trapped loved ones.
With time running out, a handful of staff and volunteers have been collecting the names and circumstances of these friends and relatives to forward to the State Department through a local congressman.
The center also is raising money and preparing to help provide food and household supplies to as many as 100 Afghans who
might be sent for resettlement in San Antonio starting this week — one family has already arrived, its director said.
The newcomers would join 600-plus Afghans who’ve come to the Alamo City since 2015.
One of them, who asked to be identified only as Honar, said his family had been told their papers were ready and that they could board a flight out of Kabul’s airport. At the center last week, he said the Taliban have been limiting access to the airport and that one of their fighters had hit his brother in the back with the butt of an AK-47 rifle the day before.
“‘What are you doing? Why are you going in?’” Honar said the gunman asked his brother harshly. “All the gates are crowded and chaos.”
Margaret Costantino, executive director of the Center for Refugee Services, stood in a small courtyard outside her office and addressed a dozen Afghans waiting to fill out forms that might smooth passage for their families to America. Most were in T-shirts, slacks and tennis shoes. A few wore the salwar kameez, the long tunic of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
One man wanted to list 12 family members on the form, but that was five too many. Costantino gave him two forms.
“This is heartbreaking. This is heartbreaking (also) as a neighbor of people whom we’ve built relationships with over the last five or six years, knowing that their families are stuck,” she said in an earlier interview.
“They are very grateful for what America has given them,” Costantino said. “We’ve gotten a lot of friendship and kindness in return. … We’re here to help, and they’re here to be good neighbors, but it’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening to their relatives and the fear on their faces.”
The single-page, handwritten forms make up slices of that heartbreak. Each starts with the San Antonio family member’s name, phone number and address and the person they are seeking to get out of Afghanistan.
“Above are my family members who are currently in Kabul in very bad situation,” one San Antonio resident had written after listing a mother, a sister and several nephews and nieces.
“They are in danger of getting killed because I worked with U.S. armed forces and because I live here in USA. So, please help me evacuate them — as soon as possible. They cannot stay on one location for too long, because the Taliban will find them.”
The center works to integrate legally resettled refugees into the community and has helped more than 1,000 clients a year who have come from more than 20 countries riven by violence, war and human rights abuses. The countries include Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Central African Republic, Eritrea and Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Afghanistan.
Most of its Afghan clients live close to the center’s modest office, which has just two paid staff and about 30 volunteers who include multilingual refugees and graduate students working on degrees in public health and mental health. The center has given more than 150 college scholarships since 2010, and it helps refugees with everything from groceries to language and citizenship classes.
The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, also has been busy, trying to locate apartments for an undetermined number of Afghan arrivals expected in the next several days, said Marisol Girela, who oversees its social programs.
It receives new refugees year-round, but a process that usually gave her two weeks’ notice now might be moment to moment, with an email alerting her that evacuees need to be picked up at the airport or already have arrived, she said.
Girela said RAICES is looking for apartments, furniture, clothes and food, “all the basic living needs” for a home. The group also will link up the new residents with potential employers and medical services and make sure their children can get enrolled in school.
“Our goal is for them to be well-connected,” Girela said. “There is significant urgency right now. … We need the community to be aware.”
RAICES also needs volunteers. Girela said those interested in helping can go to its website.
Most of the Afghans showing up last week at the Center for Refugee Services worked for U.S. military forces and obtained special immigrant visas, or SIVs, that allowed them to flee Afghanistan.
One man, Mushtaq, 41, said he is trying to get four brothers and a sister to the U.S.
“I worked with the Special Forces, and we did a lot of missions, so that’s why they’re targeting us,” he said. “They would never leave us alive.”
Another man, Ahmad, came to the U.S. under the SIV program with his wife and two children after working as an interpreter for the Army. On Thursday, he was translating for Mushtaq and another Afghan named Mohamad.
Some in Ahmad’s family worked for nongovernmental organizations as drivers or security to support a wide variety of activities in Afghanistan, from health care to economic improvement. One was a village elder.
“They want to torture me, so they’re killing my family,” said Ahmad, 35.
Mohamad, also 35, said he has been in San Antonio for more than two years with his wife and five children.
“Whatever you want, you can get it here,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunities for jobs, and children can go to school and every facility’s here. That’s the good things.”
But there’s one thing they all appreciate: their safety.
“I’m happy to live in the United States and San Antonio because I’m feeling free,” Ahmad said. “I’m safe, I have freedom. I’m feeling freedom, I can go to work.”
On the Monday after Kabul fell to the Taliban without a fight Aug. 15, Costantino and her assistant, Jean Sherrill, arrived at work to find a line running out the door, and a chilling thought crossed their minds.
“We said to each other, ‘We have no idea how to help these people,’” Costantino said.
She contacted U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, to act as a conduit to the State Department for names and other information their clients have provided. Castro’s office requested the forms and advised the center to get their clients to include their passport numbers.
“Nobody knows how to do this. This is all happening like, every day we were getting new information,” Costantino said. “Every day.”
Castro’s office warned them that some people would receive higher priority than others, she said. A critical element of the form is explaining why the person is at greater risk for attacks or death if left behind.
Other members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, also are working to help bring refugees out of the country.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, has acted on behalf of up to 20 Afghans trapped in the country. An Afghanistan War veteran, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, RHouston, has taken up the cause as well, working on behalf of hundreds more.
Brady said that “like every other office, we’re receiving calls from all over the country with heartbreaking stories, and we’re doing everything we can to get that information to the State Department and help.”
Complicating matters, many Afghans coming to America have no identification — especially women.
The Center for Refugee Services has spun up a fundraising operation to help Afghans who are flown out of the country land on their feet in San Antonio.
“The Taliban’s really not going to wait to start clamping down once they know the Americans are gone. And that’s what our people are telling us, that their family members, these people on this paper,” Costantino said, holding the form, “they’re getting knocks on the door right now and threats, and people are shooting at them.
“There is no kinder, gentler Taliban. That’s all baloney,” she added. “It’s going to be horrible for whoever’s left behind.”
“We’re here to help, and they’re here to be good neighbors, but it’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening to their relatives and the fear on their faces.” Margaret Costantino, Center for Refugee Services