Watching dramatic scenes of immigrants in a caravan moving toward the United States-Mexico border, this 20-year-old resident of the Northwest suburbs knows their plight. He walked across that bridge. He survived that jungle. He was that hungry and sick. He had that fear.
"It reminds me of what I did," says Ahmad, whose journey began after he healed enough from a vicious attack in his home in West Africa to embark on a six-month, 7,000-mile odyssey where he saw death, feared for his own life, was abandoned in a jungle, and often lost hope that he'd survive long enough to request asylum in the United States. "I see these people asking for the same things I'm here for."
Ahmad was 17 when he made it to Tijuana in Mexico, waited a month for his turn to ask American authorities for asylum, and was sent to a U.S. immigration facility for juveniles in Chicago. The number of people seeking asylum has grown so much and so quickly that President Donald Trump recently ordered that asylum-seekers wait in Mexico and now is threatening to close the southern border completely. In the meantime, border patrol agents are the ones making decisions and sometimes granting "direct releases" of migrants simply because there is no more room in detention centers at the border.
Ahmad was on the verge of being transferred to jail on his 18th birthday when a priest and brother in the Roman Catholic religious order Clerics of Saint Viator made Ahmad the first resident in their new Viator House of Hospitality for asylum-seekers, which opened in the suburbs in January 2017. Still waiting to have his plea for asylum heard by U.S. authorities, Ahmad has learned English, graduated from high school, gotten his work permit and holds a job at a warehouse to pay for his classes at Harper College in Palatine.
Ahmad is adhering to every provision of the federal law for asylum-seekers, but the Daily Herald is shielding his identity and referring to him by an alias to avoid endangering his parents and younger siblings, who remain in the West Africa nation where he grew up. The nation is rich in natural resources, but many people live in poverty, the deadly ebola plagues the region, and the government and opposition forces often clash violently.
"There were a lot of things that happened before I decided to leave the country," says Ahmad, son of politically active parents. "They're just trying to protest and tell the truth, but the government is doing things to intimidate."
