Wejdan Adam, left, and her husband Motasim Adam, with their daughter, Wesal, a four-year-old Darfuri girl who has lived most of her life without her parents in Sudan; she arrived in the U.S. last Monday, reunited through the help of HIAS, the international migration agency of the American Jewish community.
Wejdan greets Wesal upon her arrival at John F. Kennedy Airport. All pictures by Josh Strauss.
The Talmud instructs us that To Save One Life is to Save the Entire World. At HIAS, the international migration agency of the American Jewish community, we witnessed a powerful example of this eternal Jewish teaching last week when a year-long HIAS advocacy campaign to reunite a four-year-old Darfuri girl with her parents came to a joyful conclusion. This young child, Wesal Adam, was separated from her mother and father for much of her life because of a tragic gap in U.S. law.
A connection made through the HIAS Young Leaders educational activities on Darfuri refugees brought to light a profound miscarriage of justice in our current immigration law, and began HIAS’ intense involvement with the family of Motasim, Wejdan, and Wesal Adam. This work, along with our trauma counseling and social service programs for Darfuri refugees in Chad, is part of HIAS’ global effort to help repair the world and our contribution to the Jewish community’s priority campaign to Save Darfur.
Motasim Adam, a Darfuri political activist, was granted asylum in 2002 and later returned to Chad to visit his wife Wejdan who was living in a refugee camp. Arrangements to reunite the family faltered when the Department of Homeland Security ruled that Wejdan could join her husband but that Wesal, who had not been conceived at the time her father received asylum, was barred by law from accompanying her mother to the United States.
Because of the grave dangers facing women in Darfur, where Wejdan ultimately had returned, the family made the gut-wrenching decision to proceed with her immigration and leave Wesal with family friends in a Darfuri Internally Displaced Persons Camp. They believed that this would only be a brief separation.
A HIAS Young Leaders volunteer – who is an attorney at Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman – took on this case pro-bono with his firm, representing Motasim Adam in his quest to free his daughter. The attorney, who got to know Mr. Adam when seeking to do outreach to the local Darfuri community with the HIAS Young Leaders group, learned of the appeals, delays, and lack of movement from the Department of Homeland Security and began to assist the Adams. After researching the gap in the law, the attorneys determined that lobbying for the girl’s entry would provide the most expedient solution and approached HIAS for assistance. Working together, HIAS and the Kasowitz, Benson attorneys advocated tirelessly to the government to grant humanitarian parole to Wesal and allow her to join her parents. Through this advocacy, HIAS learned that government officials shared our distress but believed that their hands were tied by the legal requirements. Notwithstanding this, on May 12th HIAS finally received word that DHS had agreed to grant humanitarian parole and that little Wesal would be allowed to come to the United States.
Last Monday, HIAS joined in a tearful reunion at JFK Airport where Wesal was reunited with her mother after more than two years apart. For us, this happy occasion brought back memories of the countless reunions we had witnessed of Soviet Jews joining family in the United States after years in refusal. The following NY Times story, along with video footage of the reunion, depict some of the emotion of this event.
While HIAS struggled to assist the Adam family, we also have highlighted Wesal Adam’s plight as exhibit number one on why the law must be changed. I’m pleased to report that a legislative fix recently passed the House of Representatives and HIAS is working with the Senate so that no more children are forced to suffer the separation from their parents that Wesal experienced.
Sudanese Family Reunites in Brooklyn
(NY Times — 6/16/09) – Growing up among strangers in a refugee camp in the Darfur region of Sudan, 4-year-old Wesal Adam knew her parents mostly as faces in photographs and voices on the phone.
She knew that her father, Motasim Adam, and her mother, Wejdan Adam, lived in Brooklyn and that Mr. Adam drove a cab. But she did not know what they felt like or smelled like or how much they loved her — if at all … Read More
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Tags: HIAS, immigration, refugee, reunite
