BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Congolese woman’s search for safety sent her on a terrifying trek of nearly 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) through southern Africa on foot when she was just 15.
Reuniting with her family has been a more difficult journey. For eight years, she clung to hope through delays and setbacks as she navigated a U.S. program that reconnects refugees with family members already in the country, and her dream of seeing them again seemed close to becoming a reality.
But President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting the refugee program just hours after he took office on Jan. 20, leaving her and thousands of other refugees stranded.
“It was horrible. I would never wish for anyone to go through that, ever. When I think about it, I just ...” she said, pausing to take a long breath. “Honestly, I had given up. I told my mom maybe it was just not meant for us to see each other again.”
During a brief block on the order, the woman made it into the U.S., one of only about 70 refugees to arrive in the country since Trump took office. She asked that her name not be used because she fears retaliation.
“It’s been a really devastating roller coaster for those families, to be stuck in this limbo of not knowing whether their hope of being resettled in the United States will ever come true,” said Melissa Keaney, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project.
The woman was an infant when her mother fled the Democratic Republic of Congo’s civil war in 1997, seeking shelter at Tanzania’s Nyarugusu refugee camp. When the camp grew too dangerous, she fled for South Africa. She built a modest life there, always hoping she would rejoin her family, even after they were resettled in the U.S. For a time, that seemed likely, thanks to the “follow to join” program.
The refugee program had bipartisan support for decades, allowing people displaced by war, natural disaster or persecution to legally migrate to the U.S. and providing a pathway to citizenship.
But Trump's executive order halting the program said communities didn’t have the ability to “absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees.”
Organizations like the International Refugee Assistance Project and some refugees, including the Congolese woman and her mother, sued over Trump's order in February. They said resettlement agencies were forced to lay off hundreds of workers and some refugees were left in dangerous places.
“I had a small business and told everyone, ‘I’m out now,’” she said. “It felt like this door had just been opened, and I was running toward it when — boom! — they push it shut right in front of me.”
A difficult choice: Family or safety?
Looking back on her time in the Nyarugusu refugee camp, she remembers teaching her little brother to ride a bike and whispering with her sister late at night. She remembers hunger and fear as attacks on refugees foraging outside the camp increased.
“You see someone hanged, and that brings fear," she said. "You don’t know if you’ll be next. You don’t know if they’re waiting for you.”
By 2012, the camp was especially dangerous for teen girls, who were at risk of being kidnapped or assaulted. With little hope of a viable future, her mother made a plan: The 15-year-old would walk to South Africa, where she would have a better chance of finishing school and building a life. Her siblings were too young to make the journey, so she would have to go alone.
She didn't know the way, so joined other travelers, often going without food during the six-week journey.
The crossing from Mozambique into Zimbabwe was deep in a forest. The group she was following had hired a guide, but he abandoned them in the middle of the night. Under the thin moonlight, the group walked toward a cellphone tower in the distance, hoping to find civilization.
“How we made it to the other side was only God,” she said.
A family, worlds apart
In Durban, South Africa, she finished school, started a tailoring business, joined a church and volunteered helping homeless people.
Then in 2016, the 19-year-old got unexpected news: Her family was being resettled in the United States, without her.
“It happened so fast,” she said. “When I left, the idea of them going to be resettled was never in the mind at all.”
Her family settled in Boise, Idaho, and her mother signed her up for the “follow to join” program in 2017.
The program often takes years and requires strict vetting with interviews, medical exams and documentation. At the start of 2020, the woman was asked to provide a DNA sample, typically one of the final steps.
Then the COVID pandemic hit. For the next several years, her case foundered. A social worker would send her to the local consulate, where she'd be told to go back to the social worker.
“It went on and on,” she said. Last year, her case was handed over to lawyers volunteering their time "and that’s when we started seeing some light.”
A roller coaster of hope and despair
By January, she had her travel documents and gave up her home. But her plane ticket wasn't issued before Trump took office. Within hours, he suspended the refugee program, and the consulate told the woman she could no longer have her passport and visa.
“That was the worst moment of my life,” she said.
Nearly 130,000 refugees had conditional approval to enter the U.S. when Trump halted the program, the administration said in court documents. At least 12,000 of them were about to travel.
The aid groups' lawsuit asks a judge to declare Trump’s executive order illegal. A federal judge granted a nationwide injunction temporarily blocking the order in late February. An appeals court blocked most of the injunction weeks later.
But that brief legal window was enough: A group of refugee advocates donated funds to cover the woman's flight to the U.S.
Her family met her at the airport in March — a joyful reunion more than a dozen years in the making.
“They made a feast, and there were drinks and songs and we'd dance," she said, smiling.
The appeals court ordered the government to admit thousands more conditionally accepted refugees, but the administration has created new roadblocks, Keaney said, including decreasing the time refugees' security screenings are valid to 30 days —- down from three years.
“It causes cascades in delays, setting people back months or more,” Keaney said. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are waiting for the courts to decide what the government must do to comply with the ruling.
Rebuilding relationships
The Congolese woman, now 28, is still getting to know her youngest brothers, who were children when she left for South Africa. One is now a father.
"It’s been a long time and a lot has changed, you know, on my side and on their side,” she said. “I’m still on that learning journey. We are getting to bond again.”
Boise is friendly, but she hasn’t escaped the worries she hoped to leave behind. She fears being exposed as the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Trump administration will turn her family into targets for harassment.
“Home is where my family is. If me being known can bring any kind of negative impact ... I don't want to even imagine that happening,” she said.
