Finding safe shores was only half the struggle

Not long after Hefzur Rahman enrolled at his new school in Michigan three years ago, his fifth-grade class studied the subhuman conditions that enslaved Africans endured in overcrowded ships bound for North America.

He knew what it was like to be on a boat in fear for his life, he told his classmates.

At the age of 11, he had joined hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing violent oppression in Myanmar, cramming onto boats piloted by smugglers. The men beat their human cargo, he recalled, and he watched desperate people drink seawater only to die of dehydration. As his boat began to sink, Hefzur tied empty water bottles around his waist and jumped into the ocean. “I thought I would pass away,” he said.

Today, Hefzur is safe, living with a foster family in small-town Michigan, where most of the boats that ply nearby Elk Lake are filled with families headed for sunny afternoons on the water.

But he stays up at night worrying about his parents, who put him on the boat leaving Myanmar not just to save his life but also in the hope that he would help get the rest of the family out. They are still counting on him. “I feel like I am in jail,” he told his foster mother, anxious that he was spending too much time at school. “I want to work. I must send money to my family.”

About 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in the summer of 2017, and almost all of them, like Hefzur’s parents, are living in camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. A few thousand have been admitted to the United States — part of a dwindling number of refugees granted resettlement under a program that President Donald Trump has been scaling back and is expected to slash again this week.

Intent on curbing immigration, the Trump administration will admit no more than 30,000 refugees this fiscal year, the lowest number since the program’s inception in 1980. In the coming days, Trump is likely to announce another reduction for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct 1, perhaps setting a cap as low as 10,000 refugees or suspending admissions entirely.

The Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have faced systemic repression in the majority-Buddhist country for decades. But in August 2017, the military and allied mobs began burning entire villages. The violence, which the United Nations described as ethnic cleansing, pushed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya out of the country.

In 2015, 4,071 Rohingya refugees were admitted to the United States. About 3,000 arrived the following year. But far fewer have come since Trump took office, and as of Friday, 593 Rohingya had been admitted this year.

For the dozens of children like Hefzur who have been arriving from Myanmar without family, an initial expectation that their parents would join them has faded, leaving many of them frustrated and distraught.

“My dream is to bring my family here,” Hefzur said. “I’m afraid my mom and dad will die before I can touch them again.”

Hefzur Rahman, a Rohingya refugee who fled the genocide in Myanmar, with his foster family in Elk Rapids, Mich., Aug. 3, 2019. Thousands of Rohingya have quietly settled in the United States, but for children who fled violence in Myanmar, bringing their parents to join them is becoming a distant hope. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

In Michigan, the Rohingya community is centred in the city of Grand Rapids, where they have formed a soccer club, attend mosque together and share the latest news about developments affecting their families left behind.

Rohim Mohammod, a teenager who was resettled in Grand Rapids in 2017, mastered English within a year of arriving and has received invitations to speak on panels about the refugee experience. In May, he won his sophomore class’s “Champion of Character,” which he hung in the bedroom of the neat, two-story Craftsman house where he lives with an American family.

But like Hefzur, he often talks about his mother and two younger brothers who are trapped in Myanmar. Rohim, 17, recently got a job at a hospital cafeteria and is sending as much money as he can to his family.

“He was basically the man of the house,” Tori McGarvey, Rohim’s case manager, said. “His younger brothers looked up to him. His mother counted on him.”

Rohim Mohammod, left, prepares a meal while visiting other Rohingya refugees living in Grand Rapids, Mich., Aug. 4, 2019. Thousands of Rohingya have quietly settled in the United States, but for children who fled violence in Myanmar, bringing their parents to join them is becoming a distant hope. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

In Myanmar, parents who feared for their children’s safety paid to smuggle them to Malaysia, a majority-Muslim country. Instead they ended up in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, rescued from boats that were adrift in the high seas. After languishing in detention centres or camps for more than a year, the stateless minors were granted refugee status by the United Nations and flown to the United States.

“I never heard of United States,” said Hefzur, sitting on the edge of the lake at his foster family’s vacation home.

His paperwork said he was 12, and he looked that age, said Karen Grettenberger, his foster mother. The family enrolled him in fifth grade, and for the first few months, he was quiet and polite.

Gradually, though, he started to withdraw. When Grettenberger began taking Hefzur to therapy, “that’s when we realized that we had an angry kid,” she recalled.

“His responses were so vehement the interpreter apologized before translating,” she said. Later, at home, “He sat on the floor and refused to look at me while he played with miniature superheroes. He pulled his legs to his chest and rocked. He directed his anger at us for keeping him captive, which hurt.”

Hefzur wanted to quit school and get a full-time job to send money to his family, frustrated that his age — which had been roughly calculated when he arrived because most Rohingya do not keep records of birth dates — rendered him too young to legally work. “You need to change my age,” he told his foster mother.

The Grettenbergers asked Bethany Christian Services to arrange a bone-density test, which estimated he was 14 — old enough to work.

He took a job stocking shelves at a grocery store for minimum wage, and mowed lawns and moved dirt for neighbours. He sent almost all he earned to Myanmar, and his family used it for food and medicine, he said.

Hefzur stayed in touch with his parents via mobile phone. They struggled to envision his new life, and were displeased that their son was living with non-Muslims.

Through an interpreter, the Grettenbergers told them that they had no intention of converting him even though Lou Grettenberger, a United Methodist pastor, had been taking Hefzur to church on Sundays with the rest of his family.

The Grettenbergers also ordered decals of Quran passages — one reads “Praise be to God” — for Hefzur’s room. They bought him a new prayer book, which he placed on a bookcase beside his prayer rug. On Fridays, they drove him to the mosque for prayers.

Rohim Mohammod, a Rohingya refugee now living in Grand Rapids, Mich., prays at his mosque in Grand Rapids, Aug. 4, 2019. Thousands of Rohingya have quietly settled in the United States, but for children who fled violence in Myanmar, bringing their parents to join them is becoming a distant hope. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

Gradually, Hefzur began settling into school, and feeling less guilty about the time he spent there. When he was in 10th grade, Grettenberger was approached by his teachers. “They ganged up on me and said, ‘Your child needs to be wrestling,’” she recalled.

Once he became a powerful member of the varsity team, he started getting high-fives in the hallways. While his English was still halting and academics did not excite him, Hefzur’s other talents were becoming evident.

When the Grettenbergers bought a trampoline, Hefzur assembled it by studying the picture. He built a playhouse from an elaborate kit without reading instructions, repaired the motorboat and tractor, and created a pulley system to reach the bird feeders above the deck.

Gradually, Grettenberger said, his anxiety seemed to subside.

“It took time for him to see us as allies,” she said. “Eventually, he put the anger aside and embraced what help we are able to give.”

Denied citizenship in their homeland, the Rohingya children, like other legal residents of the United States, can become naturalised Americans after five years. When they become adults, they can apply for their parents to join them through a process known as family reunification, which Trump has said he wants to cut back.

Hefzur has begun to make plans. This semester, he started a vocational program that would enable him to graduate with a certificate in plumbing. He hopes to take a driving test soon.

Ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha last month, Hefzur sent his family money to buy a cow for slaughter. “I will keep helping them,” he said, “but I also used some of my money to buy a computer.” After setting it up, he made a 3D sketch of the Grettenberger house and insisted they hang it on the wall.

“When people asked me how I am when I first came, I could only say, ‘Fine.’ But I really didn’t know what it meant,” he said on a Saturday afternoon when he could enjoy his new hobby, sailing, after a week of hard work. “Now I really am fine — and I want my family to be fine, too.”

He hoisted the sail on his foster family’s sunfish boat and set out across Elk Lake, its waters, as they nearly always are this time of year, placid.

c.2019 The New York Times Company