Sonoma County community groups step in to help Afghan refugees

Sonoma County residents have mobilized to help two groups of Afghan refugees who have resettled in the area in recent months following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the consequential Taliban resurgence in that country.

Among those offering financial assistance and other types of community support is the Interfaith Refugee Committee, a Santa Rosa-based organization made up of members from various religious communities.

Also staff at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Petaluma, along with other volunteers, have stepped up to help several newly placed Afghan refugee families who hold Special Immigrant Visas. Those visas are given to Afghans who worked for the U.S. government during the war in their country.

The Petaluma church is collaborating with the ULM Family Foundation, a Georgia-based nonprofit that is paying for the families’ rents for six months and has helped several members get jobs, St. John’s Rev. Daniel Green said.

“The larger challenge of establishing … an immigrant in a place where services and that community is not already established, it’s one that’s going to require a kind of across-the-board sort of response,” Green said. “If they have made a commitment to try to get established in this community, and they need help to do that, we’re going to do what we can to support that process.”

Press Democrat attempts to reach a representative with the ULM Family Foundation were unsuccessful. A representative for the foundation did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

The group of local refugees is part of an influx of Afghans who have been resettled in the aftermath of this country’s decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, effectively ending its 20-year war with the Taliban. The action was completed in September.

In a speech made last July, President Joe Biden said the United States had long ago achieved the goals that motivated it to send military forces to Afghanistan after the attacks on 9/11.

By Aug. 31, in the midst of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Biden reported that more than 5,500 Americans and 100,000 Afghan allies and their families had been airlifted out of the country.

Several thousands more Afghans flooded the Kabul international airport in desperate attempts to flee the country.

Government-funded resettlement agencies have been tasked with helping Afghan refugees obtain housing, education and social services, among other basic resources, during their first three months in this country. The sheer numbers of Afghan families in need of help, though, has overwhelmed their efforts, according to refugee aid workers.

At the International Rescue Committee in Oakland, for example, 186 Afghan refugees were referred to that organization during fiscal year 2021, which spanned October 2020 to September 2021, said Heather Hansen, the committee’s executive director.

That number jumped to 321 in the last three months of 2021, she added.

“(International Rescue Committee) and other agencies have had to expand our infrastructure to serve people quite quickly,” Hansen said.

But none of those agencies are in Sonoma County, meaning resources and case workers are located hours away.

Combined with Sonoma County’s high cost of living, the community aid may be of particular importance for the local Afghan refugee families, residents who are participating in those efforts said.

“The government is very leery of sending them to a place like Santa Rosa because they have case workers in Sacramento or Oakland,” said Hubert Morel-Seytoux, one of the organizers behind the Interfaith Refugee Committee who is assisting Afghan refugees now living in Santa Rosa.

So far, the organization has raised nearly $10,000 in donations to support a local refugee family and has secured them a spot in a home owned by Santa Rosa’s Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in the Santa Rosa Junior College neighborhood, Morel-Seytoux said.

That’s where seven people who were evacuated by U.S. troops from Afghanistan last August have resettled.

The U.S. has granted six of those relatives family humanitarian parole, which permits individuals into the country temporarily when there is a compelling emergency or urgent humanitarian reason, said Roman Zemari, a U.S. citizen who lives in Santa Rosa and is related to the refugees.

The group is made up of Zemari’s four brothers, ages 12,16,18 and 20, as well as his pregnant sister and her husband.

The seventh relative is Zemari’s mother, Zakia Sayed Osman, a Santa Rosa resident who has a green card and was visiting Kabul when the U.S. withdrawal began last summer, Zemari said.

Another one of Zemari’s sisters and her two children are still in Kabul. They attempted to leave along with their other relatives who were evacuated, but gunfire from Taliban forces at the Kabul international airport turned Zemari’s sister and her children back home, Zemari said.

“As long as I have my kids with me, and they are all safe, I am happy,” Osman said of her new life in the U.S. “But I love my country … and I’m sick because of (my daughter) too.”

Zemari said the interfaith group’s assistance has helped his family overcome some of the biggest hurdles they’ve faced since arriving in Santa Rosa in October, such as finding a place to live for several adults who have no income or work history in the U.S.

On Jan. 7, a member of the First United Methodist Church of Santa Rosa went to the family’s home to help Zemari’s 18- and 20-year-old brothers, as well as his brother-in-law, sign up for courses at the Santa Rosa Junior College.

“They evacuated and started a new life in Santa Rosa,” Zemari said.

In Petaluma, Amanullah Amin, his wife and three young children, ages 1, 4 and 7, are among the families who are receiving help from the nonprofit and St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Amin, 35, was granted a special immigrant visa in May for his work as a mechanic for the U.S. Army in Kabul, a job he started in 2013 out of his desire to support the Americans’ efforts to root out terrorists groups while improving his country post-9/11.

He also wanted to provide for his family.

The move to the U.S. this summer has given Amin and his family a new start, he said.

His eldest daughter and son are enrolled in school, and his wife, who did not receive any formal education in Afghanistan, is attending English classes organized by St. John’s Episcopal Church. Amin works as a traffic control flagger at a commercial tree removal company.

Though he will be responsible for covering the $2,500 monthly cost for his family’s two-bedroom apartment when the nonprofit stops paying for his rent, the opportunities he and his family have in the U.S. keep him motivated, Amin said.

“If I (had stayed) in Afghanistan, my kids and wife, they would never go to school and know what life is,” Amin said. “Now that I’m in the U.S., now they know what is life.”

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.