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One year after the U.S. left Afghanistan, how are refugees in Dallas-Fort Worth faring?

With thin resources, resettlement agencies and nonprofits struggle to help Afghan evacuees find their footing.

A year has passed since the U.S. military’s abrupt exit from Afghanistan, but many who resettled in North Texas after fleeing the Taliban say they are still struggling to find their footing and resources.

Agencies in charge of resettlement were already stretched thin when the number of Afghan evacuees spiked with the U.S. military’s withdrawal from the Middle East country in August 2021.

Leaders of major resettlement agencies around North Texas said they, like similar organizations around the country, lacked the staff to handle the large influx of clients.

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Some Afghan evacuees have found some solid foundation to restart their lives, but many are still coping with difficulties stemming from a shortage of resettlement case workers and a lack of housing.

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“Brother, honestly, since I came here I am not feeling good,” said Faizanullah Saeed, who resettled in North Texas with his wife and five children in November.

About 11,210 people who are of Afghan descent came to Texas as part of Operation Allies Welcome, a directive from President Joe Biden to resettle evacuees from the country. Saeed, 38, worked with the U.S. Embassy until late August last year.

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Saeed was one of more than 1,500 Afghans who were resettled in Dallas alone in the past year, according to numbers from the agencies in charge of finding housing for them. More Afghans resettled in other parts of North Texas.

He and his family stayed at a hotel until late July, which posed challenges, but Saeed, who found a place in Richardson, said he is now worried about how he will be able to pay rent and feed his family.

“Rent is $1,800 a month, my paycheck is $2,800 and my food stamp has stopped, so it’s very hard for me,” Saeed said. “But I’m hopeful that I can do more work, that I can find another job.”

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He said he feels fortunate that he can speak English, but many Afghan families in North Texas struggle with the language barrier.

Saeed said he has heard from many newly arrived Afghans who feel abandoned by the agencies in charge or resettlement. His calls to his resettlement agency case manager often go unanswered, and many of the services that he and other Afghans were promised, such as rent and food assistance, have not come through.

Agencies under pressure

In Dallas, three agencies — Catholic Charities Dallas, the International Rescue Committee and Refugee Services of Texas — handle refugee resettlement.

After President Donald Trump reduced the number of refugees the U.S. would accept, funding for agencies and their staff sizes shrunk. When large groups of Afghan evacuees started to arrive, there were fewer people to manage cases, and a lack of housing, leaving people like Saeed in hotels or other temporary housing for months.

During the first 90 days of resettlement, case workers are the main point of contact for housing, food assistance and other basic needs. From 2007 to 2015, IRC Dallas resettled about 800 families a year, with about eight to nine staffers, according to executive director Shalaina Abioye.

“Now you’re talking about serving almost that amount in a three- to four-month period with half of the staff because our programs were dismantled under the Trump administration,” Abioye said. In the past year, the organization resettled 700 Afghan evacuees alone, most between October and January.

Agencies were accustomed to getting advanced notice, sometimes a year ahead, to find housing for a family coming to the U.S. through the resettlement system. For Afghan evacuees in the past year, agencies often got only a few days notice ahead of arrival. Agencies accustomed to long-term case management had to “activate ourselves as disaster response,” Abioye said.

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Many of the families that IRC served also had more than eight people in the household, making it more difficult for the agency to identify affordable housing options.

Kaitlin Cowan, program manager for refugee resettlement at Catholic Charities Fort Worth,

said some services, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and health screenings, took longer than usual because of the volume of clients the agency worked with. Health screening appointments for new arrivals, for example, typically take 30 days to schedule. The process took twice as long for some of the recent Afghan evacuees, Cowan said.

“It was hard; it was frustrating navigating the resources that were there and trying to grow them was frustrating,” Cowan said.

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Nonprofits try to help

With the strain on resources at resettlement agencies, nonprofits have been trying to provide help, such as with furniture and health care .

Hala Halabi, the director of ICNA Relief USA, a national organization with a presence in Dallas, said her

organization started a new program that employs recently arrived Afghans as translators and interpreters to help other Afghan evacuees.

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“We hired from the new Afghan refugees who arrived to empower them,” Halabi said.

Housing prices and availability posed challenges, but Halabi said the largest difficulty was that many apartment complexes that worked with the organization and resettlement agencies in the past stopped doing so.

Halabi said many refugees do not have renters history or credit, and landlords are hesitant to take tenants who are in the country as refugees.

“No one is willing to give apartments to refugees; it’s painful,” she said.

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ICNA Relief USA director Hala Halabi organized free school bags during a back-to-school and...
ICNA Relief USA director Hala Halabi organized free school bags during a back-to-school and health fair event organized by ICNA Relief USA at Dallas Food Pantry on Saturday, July 30, 2022. (Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer)

Afghan Unity DFW, a cultural organization, shifted a lot of its resources to helping recently resettled Afghan families.

Mari Mirzazada, a board member of the nonprofit, said she and other volunteers have been fielding calls and trying to do what they can to help refugees, but added that they, too, have been stretched thin because the organization is not equipped to handle resettlement.

“It’s not just 10 families or 20 families; we have more than a thousand in the Dallas area,” she said.

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Mirzazada said she has heard about problems stemming from the policies of the previous administration, but said she thinks it’s more important to think of solutions for recently arrived Afghan evacuees rather than focus on politics.

“We cannot dwell on that while people are suffering,” she said. “So let’s make an executive order and say, ‘This much money is allocated for the Afghans who helped us for the past 20 years.’”

Diana Neak, who also serves on the board of Afghan Unity, said evacuees also need legal services for their immigration status. While evacuees who are in the country under a special immigrant visa have some breathing room to figure out the next steps to get their permanent residency, the majority of Afghan nationals who came to the U.S. under Operation Allies Welcome were approved for humanitarian parole status for two years, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Many did not know about deadlines they had to meet to apply for humanitarian parole, and others were rejected for the status because of an interview process that did not factor in their unique circumstances, Neak said.

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“It wasn’t necessarily the translation or anything, but the verbiage used in the process to become an Afghan parolee was the same verbiage used for all refugees; but every refugee community has their own plight and difficulties,” she added.

Hope Kitchen

Neak said she has been heartened to see that some Afghans are starting to find their way.

Hope Kitchen, a program started by DFW Refugee Outreach Services, consists of women who operate a catering service.

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Hiba Tanvir, a board member of DFW Refugee Outreach Services, recognized the need for the Hope Kitchen while teaching English to about 20 women who had gathered at an apartment unit . Most of them were Afghan.

Tanvir, who is passionate about women’s empowerment and gender equality, said she sees the Hope Kitchen as a vehicle for giving agency back to women who are trying to find ways to support their families through resettlement.

“It was a way for them to make money with dignity,” Tanvir said.

Fatima Khan was 22 when she came to the U.S. three years ago from Afghanistan, newly married, with her husband.

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She thought she would be able to continue her education in dentistry.

After she arrived in the U.S., however, she learned that her previous documentation would not be accepted, and that she would have to restart her academic career.

“With housing, with no transportation and then the costs for school, it was not possible,” Khan said.

She joined the Hope Kitchen and in a matter of months, Khan said she was seeing a new flow of income.

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Women who are part of the Hope Kitchen are now working with Afghan women who arrived in Dallas in the past year to help them find footing as well.

Khan said her family’s circumstances have greatly improved since she first arrived in the U.S., and she hasn’t given up her dreams to become a dentist.

“I still plan to go back to school and complete my education, inshallah [God willing],” Khan said.