Welcome to America, and hold onto your cash.
A newly arrived Iraqi refugee, who rushed to the US ahead of a pending travel ban and spent one of his first days fulfilling a dream to visit the Statue of Liberty, got a rougher reception in Times Square.
The immigrant, who is going by the name Ahmad to protect his family in Iraq, was shopping with his wife for warm clothing for their baby son. As he went from store to store on Jan. 28, someone lifted the wallet in his back pocket that held $3,200 in cash.
“That was all they had to travel with,” said Katharine Naples-Mitchell, a CUNY Law School student helping Ahmad along with fellow student Whitney McCann.
The pair lead the law school’s chapter of the International Refugee Assistance Project, which worked on Ahmad’s case for years.
Ahmad, 33, helped the US Military during the Iraq war, putting his life in danger. Terrorists called him a traitor and placed a bomb in his home’s generator, which US and Iraqi soliders defused.
He secured a visa in December, but did not have flight arrangements when word of the Trump Administration’s travel ban leaked last month.
The CUNY students called him in the middle of the night and asked him to make a split-second decision to leave Iraq.
“They had about four hours to pack everything,” said Naples-Mitchell.
Naples-Mitchell funded $8,000 in airfare for Ahmad and for another immigrant’s family on her personal credit card.
Both have since left for the cities they will now call home.
The law students set up Go Fund Me pages to help the refugees in the US and for reimbursement of their travel costs and other expenses.
Ahmad said he was not soured by the Times Square pickpocketing.
“Everywhere in the world, there are good people and there are bad people. So no, it didn’t change my view of America,” he said.