This 89-year-old Iranian Jew arrived just before U.S. borders were shut to all refugees. Hundreds more Iranian Jews are waiting
His well-timed exodus from Iran, along with that of his entire group on the flight, was handled by HIAS, formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
A 2009 rally in solidarity with protesters in Iran at San Francisco City Hall. Photo by Steve Rhodes via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
This article originally appeared on J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and was reprinted here with permission.
David, an 89-year-old Iranian Jewish refugee, landed in Washington, D.C., last month on a plane with 17 fellow Iranians fleeing religious persecution. They were Baha’i, Christians and members of other minority faiths. David was the only Jew.
It was Jan. 17, three days before America shut its doors to all refugees.
David’s well-timed exodus from Iran, along with that of his entire group on the flight, was handled by HIAS, formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the nation’s oldest refugee aid agency. A HIAS representative took the group to a hotel, fed them and, the next morning, put them on flights to their final destinations.
David arrived in the Bay Area on Jan. 18 to join his niece, who lives in Hillsborough and has been in the country for more than 30 years. At David’s request, neither of them is using their real names out of fear of being identified.
During a Zoom interview, David sat in a chair dressed in a blue button-down shirt and blue pants, smiling softly through the screen while his niece translated for him. He understands a lot of English but does not speak it. He said he was a “highly educated medical professional,” declining to be more specific, again out of fear of being identified.
His niece tried to tell him that he is safe now, that as the last member of his family to come to the United States, he has no relatives left in Iran to worry about. But David has lived in fear for so long that a week in America won’t change that.
David arrived with almost nothing. He was unable to sell his house in Iran, and even if he had, the conversion rate for the Iranian currency is so bad, he would have been left with practically no money. The government restricts the amount Iranians can take out legally, he said, and those who do so illegally must pay 20 or 30 percent under the table.
Leaving his house and most of his belongings behind, he packed family photographs, some warm clothes, two cooking pots, a jar of honey and some dark chocolate.
“He didn’t know what they would give him to eat in Europe,” where he would be waiting to enter the U.S., his niece said.
David said that while he has been lucky enough to migrate to the U.S., he is worried for those still in Iran.
“I’m afraid for my Jewish and non-Jewish friends back home,” he told J.
The number of Iranian immigrants in the United States doubled in the 20 years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Today an estimated 385,000 live in the U.S., according to a 2019 report by the Migration Policy Institute; more than half of them live in California.
After dwindling to almost nothing during the first Trump administration, immigration from Iran moved into high gear again in March 2023, months after the outbreak of nationwide protests that led to 500 deaths and tens of thousands of arrests. Reports from U.S. agencies monitoring religious persecution in Iran say the situation has deteriorated in the past few years, as members of minority faiths are harassed, arrested and sometimes executed on spurious charges.
“All of us lived as Muslims in Iran,” his niece told J., “but it became worse recently. My uncle stopped going to synagogue about three years ago. He was afraid of being followed, and then they would know he was Jewish.”
On his first Shabbat in America, David accompanied his niece to Chabad North Peninsula in San Mateo, where she is a regular. He smiled when she said that, at last, he can go to synagogue again.
David, who had stayed behind to take care of his mother after the rest of the family left for America decades ago, first applied for entry in 2016, but his application, along with everyone else’s, was frozen. He applied again two years ago and, with his niece’s help in reaching out to Jewish Family Services Silicon Valley, he was able to secure his visa.
His visa was expedited, his niece said, because of his age and because religious persecution was ramping up in Iran.
“The Jewish Family Services representative has been incredible,” his niece said. “We sent more than 400 emails back and forth. She got all the documentation going.”
In October 2024, David finally was able to leave Iran. After living in a temporary HIAS location in Europe, he flew with his group to the U.S., getting in just under the wire.
Three days later, all new refugee admissions to this country were halted. On Jan. 20, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump signed executive orders closing the U.S. borders and shutting down the United States Refugee Admissions Program, the federal agency that brings refugees to the United States and works with local organizations to support and resettle them.
JFS Silicon Valley gave David some initial help, including $200 in cash. “They came to the house to make sure he was safe and had food to eat,” his niece reported.
Eventually, David, like other local refugees, will receive about $1,650 “for the first month’s rent and basic needs, until all the paperwork goes through and they get on their feet,” she said. “I feel horrible. I have my uncle — I’m able to give him a bed and food. But others don’t have that kind of blessing.”
HIAS has been bringing refugees out of Iran since the 1979 revolution, said Mark Hetfield, the organization’s CEO. “We predominantly help non-Jewish people get to the United States, but one of the reasons the Iran program is important to us is it’s the one program where we are still helping a lot of people who are leaving because they are Jewish,” he told J.
Hetfield said HIAS has 14,000 Iranians on its lists right now, religious minorities who are registered with the organization, waiting for visas to get out of the country. More than 700 of them are Jews.
“That’s not an insignificant number,” he said. HIAS is unable to bring more refugees out of Iran more quickly because they must stay temporarily in Europe, and visas for those European countries are “very strict,” he said.
He declined to say which European countries are hosting the Iranian refugees because when the first Trump administration shut down immigration from so-called “Muslim majority nations,” all of the Iranian refugees then in Vienna were stranded there. Austria ended up giving them asylum, he said, but it’s an experience that the country, and HIAS, do not want to repeat.
Several times during his interview with J., David interrupted his niece to express his gratitude to the Jewish agencies that enabled his journey to America. He said that in his view, support for refugees is a bedrock of America’s legacy.
“The immigrants come to the United States not just for freedom but because they know there is some support, some help for them,” he said.
“Please tell her,” he said to his niece, “that support for new immigrants is crucial to their survival. It must not end.”
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