This is part of a series of stories about people seeking asylum or refuge in Southern Arizona and the complex, chaotic U.S. immigration system at the center of a humanitarian crisis. Read them all here.
Dalal offers Turkish coffee in a traditional copper coffee pot with a wooden handle called a dolea in Arabic. She serves it with a bowl filled with mini Snickers bars. Drinking coffee with chocolate reminds her of home. Dalal is mindful of this makeshift effort to keep her traditions alive in a desert city thousands of miles from her native Syria.
She places one of her dining room chairs in front of the futon — the main piece of furniture she’s collected so far since arriving in Tucson. She places the tray on top of a chair she uses as a coffee table. Dalal sits on the floor. It’s what she’s used to, she says.
Dalal sits and remembers Syria.
Living in her home country with her family when they were still together, and then when they were forcibly separated. In 2012, she says her brother, husband and father were all arrested by the Syrian government for protesting. Dalal’s husband and brother were taken to a different prison than her father.
“When they captured him, they put him in a prison where it’s very well known that they torture people,” she says, remembering her father and speaking through a translator, Rania Kanawati.
Syrian refugees in Arizona and the U.S.
People seeking refuge in the U.S. arrive in a myriad of ways other than crossing the border by foot or via ports of entry. More than 2,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Arizona since the United States began its modern refugee program in 1980, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security. For the first three decades of the program, annually there were typically one or two Syrians resettled in the state. After the civil war began there in 2011, those numbers shot up. In 2016, 820 Syrian refugees resettled in Arizona. In 2023, there were nearly 350.
In total, for 2023, there were an estimated 6,000 refugees in Arizona, which is about the same number as the year before.
Every year, the current U.S. president sets the ceiling for the total number of refugees who can be resettled in the country. After the ceiling dropped to historic lows — 15,000 under the Trump administration — President Joe Biden reset the ceiling to 125,000 refugees. Though only about 50,000 were ultimately resettled in the country last year.
There were 3,881 Syrian people among those refugees last fiscal year. In the first 10 years after the war broke out in Syria, approximately 27,900 Syrians have been resettled in the United States. In total, almost seven million Syrians have had to flee their country since 2011.
— John Washington
Rania is a Tucsonan and director of the Empowerment, Friendship, and Leadership Association, or “ELFA.” She started the organization in the late 2000s to assist Syrian war refugees coming to Tucson to escape the violence back home.
She explains that when former president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, died in 2000, his son, Bashar al-Assad, assumed power. Under al-Assad’s regime, the government began detaining anyone who challenged his rule as a legitimate president. In 2011, pro-democracy protests grew into a major uprising against al-Assad that erupted into a civil war.
Dalal asked not to share her last name because of fears over what her family faced in Syria. She worries about her children, and wants to make sure they are safe now. The International Rescue Committee helped Dalal rebuild her life in Tucson. She and her children are among the more than 2,000 Syrian refugees who have resettled in Arizona since the civil war, and among the millions forced to flee the country since 2011.
Dalal remembers going to visit her father in prison. She says most people were not allowed to see their detained loved ones. Dalal saw what guards did to her father. She could do nothing.
Rania spares the painful details of Dalal’s father’s torture. But Dalal is listening. She watches closely as her words travel from a translator to a reporter. She speaks up for herself — without words. In a series of swift gestures to her throat and temple, Dalal’s signals that her father was choked and beaten while imprisoned.
She says her father was allowed outside once a day. He was in the prison yard when a bomb dropped. He did not survive his injuries.
Dalal says she was notified when her father died, but the Syrian government never told her what happened to her brother after his arrest. She assumes he is dead, too.
Dalal’s husband — the third of her missing loved ones — was taken to a different prison, also known for torturing detainees. More than a decade later, through tears, she remembers losing her life partner.
To survive, she took over her husband’s factory job making cardboard boxes. Seeking somewhere safe to live, she moved with her children into the factory. At work she started facing sexual harassment.
She knew she needed to leave Syria.
A fight for freedom continues in Lebanon
Dalal made a plan — flee to Lebanon to stay with her mother. But her husband was still not confirmed dead, so she could not take her children across the border.
Instead, she was forced to file for divorce before she could escape. She waited month after month.
When her divorce was finally granted, she left her home country and crossed the border into Lebanon — with her children.
Dalal lived with her mother and other family members for four years. She worked as a housekeeper and was able to send her children to school.
She soon realized her family’s home was not safe for her children. Her uncles did not support Dalal’s daughter’s education.When she moved out on her own, Dalal did not make enough money as a housekeeper to cover the full rent, so everyone helped, including her young sons, ages 6 and 7.
“My two sons started working very hard jobs as a young kid, working to afford just the rent. Even food, I couldn’t afford food,” she says.
It still wasn’t enough. She heard about a United Nations program that helped people apply for food stamps. Dalal reached out. Years later, that link to support would help recognize her family as refugees.
In 2020, Dalal got a call from UN officials. They asked her about moving to the United States. But Dalal had to tell them that she still did not have legal custody of her children.
She knew she had to do whatever it took to find displaced family members of her missing husband. Amid the deadly war, her husband’s family had scattered. For three years, Dalal searched.
Finally, a social media post connected her to her husband’s loved ones. She shared her story with them and started the long process of gaining custody of her own children.
In Lebanon, her children had rebuilt their own lives. Her youngest daughter was in elementary school. Dalal says educating her children – regardless of gender – is one of her most important values. Dalal’s uncle did not agree.
“During this time I decided to let my daughter go to school against my family’s wishes, because my family is very strict,” she says. “Girls should not study. Should not go to school because there is a mix of boys and girls in the school. So they want her to stay home.”
Dalal says her uncle was following her daughter and would wait for her, outside the school, to punish her for attending classes. She fought for her daughter to continue school. That fight and the dangers she and her daughter faced expedited her application with the U.N. for refuge in the U.S.
“They say, ‘Next week, we’re going to bring a van, you collect your stuff and we’re going to come and take you with the van and take you to the airport. You’re going to America,’” Dalal says, remembering as tears fill her eyes.
Dalal and her four children fled, again.
After Lebanon, they flew to Germany, and then Los Angeles, before landing in Tucson. On the plane she met a stranger who would help her understand that she would not be alone in her new home in the desert.
A new home in Tucson
Migrants coming to the United States are not just coming from México, Central America, and South America. Dalal is among refugees originally from Syria. At Casa Alitas, a Tucson shelter, Director Diego Lopez said the refugees, migrants and people seeking asylum here now come from all over the world, including women, men and children from roughly 46 countries last fall.
“There’s a pathway for them to maybe fly into Italy, or another country in the African continent, then fly into Mexico City or another international airport in México, or you’re flying into Guatemala and then traveling forward,” said Lopez during a tour of the facility.
“There’s a myriad of channels and so forth that keep changing as we might be trying to limit or restrict certain populations from moving from country to country,” he said.
The stranger Dalal met on the plane spoke Arabic. She shared her and her children’s story. Her seatmate told her — in her native language — about the growing Syrian community in Tucson. They put her in touch with people who have become a support system.
Dalal arrived in Tucson with her four children as the Arizona heat reached peak July temperatures.
Rania and other volunteers from her community nonprofit organization help refugee families like Dalal’s navigate their new home and offer them someone to lean on while they adjust to living in the U.S.
“In some cases, like this, we find out (about new refugees) through word of mouth. They will tell us, ‘well, a Syrian family came, and she’s a widow,’” Rania says.
Dalal remembers Syria. It’s where her family lived before the war. Thousands of miles away now, she still thinks about those who did not get out.
“I’m glad I came here and I’m very happy, but people there have no rights to live as a human being, living miserable lives. Very miserable,” she says. “I feel happy here, but I also feel so sad that there is a lot of people still suffering there.”
Dalal’s highest priority, now that she’s safe in Tucson, is the education of her children. She speaks about her daughter’s education rights, and about her son and how he had to give up school to support the family when they first left Syria.
“I promised him wherever we go, I will make sure he will study,” she says.
All four of Dalal’s children are now in school.
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