by: Mark and Julie at Minority Humanitarian Foundation
This man was a dentist in Syria who raised Arabian horses to race and stud. He was a millionaire, living well and everything was good in his life. He belonged to the Catholic faith, a minority, but he had no problems until the war. When the war started things started going bad for him
They had some small problems at first, but it wasn’t anything they couldn’t deal with. Then one day a friend and him were going through a government checkpoint and they got stopped. They were harassed for being Catholic. The soldiers killed his friend, and turned to him. They said “we understand you’re a dentist”. They broke out all his teeth with a pipe and left him for dead. When they figured out he was still alive the government confiscated his bank accounts, and of his horses were all killed.
They sent a message and said if he didn’t leave the country they would kill everyone in his family. He was able to leave through a trek on foot that took him to Beirut, Lebanon. From there he went by air to Paris, by air to Brazil, and then by foot and hitchhiking to the American border.
He turned himself in at the border and in four months he was sent to six different detention centers. They fast-tracked his case and ordered him deported. He did a 30-day hunger strike protesting his case and treatment. On the 30th day the judge called for him to be brought to court. After he spoke the judge, the judge ordered for him to be released. He was released with no bond and no parole, and he is now being allowed to fight his case.
We met him by chance. We went to pick up another client, and he was being released that night at well. He looked scared and nervous so we asked him if he needed help. He said “yes I have no one here, I need to get to the train station to get to Los Angeles. My friend is there and he will let me stay the night.” We asked him if he had money and he said “no” so we told him we would send him in a Lyft. He didn’t know what a Lyft was. We explained, and he was basically in shock that we were helping him.
He told us he was trying to get to his family in New Jersey and we told him about Miles4Migrants. He didn’t believe us. But he called us the next day and Seth was able to find a donor to make this happen. Thank you to the donor who helped this man’s horrible journey finally come to an end.
Note: The miles given for this case were given in honor of Mark Ayoub, an incredible Miles4Migrants volunteer who died in July 2019. For the miles to then be used on a Syrian man with Mark’s last name, who had the same career as Mark’s late father, and who fled Syria for the US for the same reasons that Mark’s ancestors did 100 years ago is too incredible of a coincidence for us to fail to note it here.