When Syria Came to Fresno: Refugees Test Limits of Outstretched Hand

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/fresno-syrian-refugees.html

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FRESNO, Calif. — The police responded to a call about a loud party on East San Ramon Avenue, but it wasn’t just any party: A sheep was reportedly being slaughtered in a backyard.

“Muslim refugees were unaware that slaughtering sheep is not allowed in the city,” the police wrote afterward in their report, which also stated that those involved “were advised to clean up the blood and mess” and warned that in the future “they could be cited.”

The animal, actually a goat, was killed by a Syrian refugee who later skinned, roasted and shared it with his Syrian neighbors in the apartment complex where they all live.

Refugees are typically placed in towns and cities such as Buffalo, N.Y.; Boise, Idaho; and Fayetteville, Ark., where resettlement agencies ease their transition to life in a new country. But they are free to move about the country like anybody else, and they sometimes land in places like Fresno that are not exactly prepared for their arrival.

Since late 2016, more than 200 Syrian refugees originally settled elsewhere in the United States have made a fresh start in Fresno, the largest city in California’s agricultural belt. They have been drawn there mainly by cheap housing.

But behind the low rent is a city struggling with high poverty and unemployment, making it more difficult for the refugees to secure jobs. And Fresno has no federally funded agency to help them find work, learn basics like bus routes and understand United States culture and rules, like with the practice of animal slaughter.

Syrian children turned up unexpectedly at Ahwahnee Middle School, needing vaccinations, trauma counseling, English-language instruction and academic support as a result of interrupted schooling. “It was a shock at first,” said Jose Guzman, the principal. “We never had to teach students who speak Arabic.”

He hired an Arabic-speaking teaching assistant, while some of his staff communicated with students with the aid of Google Translate.

Without notice, there also was no time to build political and community support for the new arrivals. So while they elicited gestures of kindness from some, they aroused suspicion from others. Some mosques, churches and a synagogue came to the refugees’ aid. A local car broker donated a 1999 Toyota Avalon to one of the Syrians, Abdulrazzaq Alghraibi, a father of four who now works on the de-winging line at a poultry plant.

But Muslim refugees represent a polarizing issue. Although all refugees undergo extensive screening before being approved for resettlement, some Fresnans have echoed President Trump’s concerns that the vetting isn’t good enough.

Among them is Trevor Carey, a conservative talk-show host on PowerTalk 96.7 FM.

“In my years in the valley, I’ve met some great Syrian people,” he said on the air during a segment about Muslim refugees. “Come on, our safety is at stake here. This area they are coming from is embedded with ISIS.”

That sentiment was shared by Michael Martin, a 28-year-old who works in air-conditioning maintenance. He praised Fresno’s diversity, citing its Armenian and Hmong communities. As for the Syrians, “I think it’s a little bit scary because of what is going on” in their home country, he said over lunch at the Chicken Pie Shop, a popular local diner.

His father, Joe, was not against their presence. “Anything is fine as long as they act like us,” he said.

There is a tradition of refugees continuing to migrate once they reach the United States. In the 1990s, about a dozen evangelical Christian families from the former Soviet Union who originally settled in Oregon and Washington followed a leader to Delta Junction, Alaska, and established a community there.

Many Hmong, an ethnic group from Laos that helped the United States during the Vietnam War, left their first American homes and converged on the Twin Cities, in Minnesota, where leaders like Leng “Vang” Wong, a former interpreter for the C.I.A., had settled.

At the moment, no refugees can enter the United States for four months unless they already have a close relative here, according to a Supreme Court order that allowed part of Mr. Trump’s travel ban to proceed. But in the past two years, more than 20,000 Syrians have been admitted after fleeing civil war and the Islamic State’s ruthless grip on parts of the country.

As the Syrian flow intensified, Turlock, a town about 80 miles north of Fresno that has been receiving Christian minorities from Iraq and Iran for more than a decade, was identified as a site with “decent housing, jobs and a welcoming mayor,” said Karen Ferguson, executive director of the International Rescue Committee of Northern California.

About 250 Syrians, overwhelmingly Muslim, were sent there. But the agency could not immediately house all of them, stranding some families in hotels for several weeks or longer.

Last fall, a few members of Fresno’s 15,000-strong Muslim community — Pakistanis, Yemenis, Iranians and Palestinians, among others — offered to help. Soon, they were welcoming four Syrian families to apartments that they had found for them.

Word traveled fast to Turlock and elsewhere that rent in Fresno was a relative bargain — about $450 a month for a two-bedroom unit in some places — and that there were people ready to supply furniture, food, clothing and more.

“Helping one or two families, that’s easy,” said Reza Nekumanesh, director of the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno. “But soon, one family after another was arriving — from San Diego, out of state.”

“They didn’t realize rent is low here for a reason,” he said.

Abdullah Zakaria, who ran cafes in Syria, fled to Jordan with his family in 2013 after a bomb struck his house in Homs and burned his eldest child, Tasneem, now 7, whose back still bears scars. They could not find work in Turlock, so they moved to Fresno. Mr. Zakaria and his wife, Aida, are trying to start a business selling kibbehs, shawarmas and sfihas to Fresno State University students and others.

“Fresno is bigger city,” Mr. Zakaria said. “I want to open restaurant.”

In a blue-collar neighborhood once dubbed “Sin City,” more than a dozen Syrian families with up to nine members apiece are crammed into two-bedroom units in two apartment blocks on East San Ramon Avenue, where the goat sacrifice occurred in February.

Some have found jobs, including at a carwash and a poultry plant. Nasser Alobeid, who worked as a security guard in Syria, is still jobless, and he and his wife, Neveen Alassad, get by with a $1,100 monthly welfare check, food stamps and help from the local community.

“Nasser doesn’t speak English,” Ms. Alassad, a mother of five, said in broken English while Syrian children poured into a concrete courtyard to play.

Having left a resettlement agency’s fold, the refugees no longer had access to interpreters, employment training and English classes. Many couldn’t afford the security deposit to rent an apartment.

Help came from across the religious spectrum. The Islamic Cultural Center began paying deposits and utility bills. Wesley United Methodist Church distributed vouchers for its thrift store. Jim Call, a member of the Mormon community, collected donations to buy dining sets and TVs. Congregants from Temple Beth Israel also stepped up.

Fresno’s new Syrians also are relying on people like Nabih Dagher, whose Dunia International Market sells halal meat, pita bread and other Middle Eastern staples. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Dagher flipped through a notebook in which each page was filled with the name of a Syrian family and the sum owed him from each visit, $56.50 to $449.64.

“I give each family $20, $50 groceries free,” said Mr. Dagher, a Syrian Christian who has been in the United States for 15 years. “After that, I said you have to pay.”

In March, the Fresno Board of Supervisors approved a $375,000 grant over four and a half years to Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries, or FIRM, a local nonprofit. The money is paying for four part-time Arabic speakers but doesn’t cover the full cost of serving the newcomers, whose needs are “insane,” said Zachary Darrah, FIRM’s executive director.

Mr. Darrah, a Baptist pastor, has also made it his mission to sell Fresno on the Syrians. Last month he led a service in an upscale retirement community, where he noted that the Syrians arriving in Fresno are “moderate or secular Muslims.”

“Everyone is our neighbor, even Muslims,” he told the worshipers. “Our God said it doesn’t matter.”

Some nodded; others shook their heads. “As a Christian, I believe in what the Lord says” about welcoming strangers, said one worshiper, Doris Rahm. But she added, “I have concerns if they are not vetted properly.”

At another gathering, Mr. Darrah said, “A guy told me he had a great idea, find some land far from Fresno and send the Syrians there because they’re a danger to the community.” Mr. Darrah said he then told the man that Fresno during World War II had an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, a blemish on its past.

But there have been no reports of anti-Muslim violence or vandalism. And Syrians keep arriving. Among them is Anas Hammad, a baker and father of two, who was originally settled in Michigan.

Mr. Alghraibi, the new owner of the old Toyota, has invited friends living in Tennessee who had been his neighbors in a refugee camp in Turkey.

“I’ve gotten calls from Indiana, Florida, Texas,” said Mr. Darrah. “We can’t stop families from coming here. ”