The Boston Globe’s Matt Viser tells the story of Naimo Ahmed, a Somalian, who is among a growing number of immigrants fleeing the United States into Canada.
They have lost all hope of life in the United States. They are “Propelled by fear — fear compounded after President Trump’s election and the start of the era of disruption, especially for immigrants, that he promised — they have fled north, walking miles across snowy fields, leaving the ghosts of their old lives behind, cars abandoned near the border, toys sitting unused in empty apartments. Drawn to America by the historic promise of liberty and opportunity, their guideposts now were the red lights flashing atop wind turbines, showing the way through the dead of night into a more welcoming land.”
Naimo said, “I came out of my country running. They were after my life. Someday, I’m praying to God, I’ll be stable and peaceful again. I won’t have to look around and see who is behind me.”
Naimo made it to Ecuador and undertook the perilous journey to the United States because she believed “It was a place where we were accepted. The whole world, they accept the whole world. Whoever has a problem.”
But Naimo found that the country she thought was a more welcoming land is not and she still has to look around to see who is behind her.
Naimo’s story is interesting. It begins in 1993 Mogadishu, one month after the fight by U.S. Special Forces in the Battle for Mogadishu, as memorialized in the movie “Black Hawk Down,” went terribly wrong.
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Women and children flee down a street
in Mogadishu on April 14, 2013, after
an attack by armed suicide bombers
killed several people.
Naimo left her native country last year
(Getty Images).
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By Matt Viser
