HASLET, Texas — Concerned about his mother's health, Jacob Mabil spent months trying to persuade her to let him start the process that would take her from a sprawling refugee camp where she had spent nearly a decade after fleeing violence in South Sudan.
He wanted her to come live with him and his young family in the US. But before she agreed, she asked for a promise: that one day he would also take the granddaughters she raised as babies.
Mabil, now 44, said he would do everything he could. But it turned out that he was only allowed to petition for immediate family members. Although his mother joined him in the suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, in 2020, his nieces remained in Africa.
“That always killed me,” said Mabil, whose own childhood was torn apart by Sudan's civil war.
As the US government changes the way refugees are resettled, Mabil and his family now hold out hope that they will be reunited with two of his nieces, who will soon turn 18 and 19. The Biden administration this month opened the application process for Americans who have formed groups to privately sponsor refugees and request the specific person they want to bring to the U.S.
When he was just eight, Mabil was forced to flee for his life when soldiers entered his village in what is now South Sudan and set it on fire while killing people. He became part of the group of children known as the 'lost boys', who spent years alone and walked hundreds of miles to escape violence.
Mabil, who didn't know his mother was alive until shortly after arriving in the U.S. in his early 20s, said he wants his sister's daughters to have the same opportunities he did.
Traditionally, resettlement agencies have placed refugees in communities, but the push to also add private sponsorship has come as President Joe Biden works to restore a program that was decimated under former President Donald Trump. The launch in early 2023 of the State Department's Welcome Corps program, which gives ordinary Americans the chance to form their own groups to privately sponsor refugees, came after a similar venture in which U.S. citizens could sponsor Afghans or Ukrainians.
“In many ways, I think this is one of the most important things the American resettlement program has ever done,” said Sasha Chanoff, founder and CEO of RefugePoint, a Boston-based nonprofit that helps refugees. “It will give families in desperate need the opportunity to reunite.”
With the U.S. hoping to bring in 125,000 refugees this fiscal year, using private sponsors will expand the capacity of the existing system, Welcome Corps spokeswoman Monna Kashfi said. She added that the opportunity to apply to sponsor a specific refugee was greatly anticipated.
“We've been hearing from people all year long wanting to know … when they could apply to sponsor someone they know,” she said.
Mabil, his wife and his mother have already joined two family friends to form their own sponsorship group to begin the process of transferring his two nieces, who were placed in boarding school when their grandmother left Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya for the USA will graduate soon and the other has returned to camp after graduation.
Chanoff said unaccompanied girls in the camp are often “in extreme danger” and are regularly abducted and sold into marriage.
Mabil's wife, Akuot Leek, 33, is also from South Sudan and spent her childhood traveling with her family from one place to another to try to escape the violence. She wants the young women to have the same freedom she did in choosing what they wanted to do with their lives.
Leek and Mabil started dating after meeting at a wedding in the US, and both have graduated from university and now work in finance.
Mabil was one of about 20,000 young people who embarked on an odyssey that first took them to Ethiopia, where they spent about three years before a war there forced them to flee again. The survivors eventually reached Kakuma, where Mabil spent nearly a decade before coming to the US
“They had survived bullets and bombs and wild animal attacks and things that you and I couldn't imagine coming to the Kakuma camp,” said Chanoff, who met Mabil at the camp.
Leek and Mabil say once his nieces settle in Texas, they may try to bring other family members over.
Mabil's mother, Adeng Ajang, said living with her son, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren in their comfortable home has made her very happy. The only stress she has in her life now is worrying about her granddaughters.
“It was hard to leave them behind,” Ajang said as her daughter-in-law translated from the Dinka language. “It was difficult.”
Ajang said she often talks to her granddaughters on the phone. “Sometimes we talk and then we start crying,” she said.
For Mabil, he is excited and nervous to start the process. “This is my last chance,” he said.
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Videojournalist Kendria LaFleur contributed to this report.