Ibrahim’s Bridge Across Borders

Ibrahim trained as a structural engineer in Aleppo. By the time he was 30 he had worked on three of the largest infrastructure projects in northern Syria. The conflict took most of those projects, and eventually it took the city he grew up in.

He arrived in the United States with two suitcases and a portfolio of work that no licensing body here would automatically recognize. The work of asylum is not the work of credential transfer, but for many highly skilled refugees, the two are inseparable: legal status is the floor on which a profession can be rebuilt.

Deport Defense pairs Ibrahim with an attorney experienced in Syrian credible-fear cases. Alongside the legal proceedings, our case-management partners are helping him through the credential-evaluation process so that, when his status is secure, his career can resume — not from zero, but from where the war forced him to stop.