With resolve, we are inspired by the hope and resilience of a young man from Guinea: Oumar.*
Until he was 17, Oumar lived with his mother and five siblings in a two-room house with no running water or electricity. The street they lived on was a gathering place for frequent protests against the country’s military regime. In 2021, Guinea’s president was ousted in a coup d’etat, and the nation has been besieged with violence ever since.
Oumar says that because his neighborhood held so many protests, soldiers and police frequently raided the area, assaulting and arresting people indiscriminately.
Once, while Oumar was walking home from school, he and his friends came upon protesters clashing with police. One of the officers, believing Oumar was involved in the protest, accused him of having thrown a rock. He hit Oumar with an iron rod.
West Africa has endured a wave of military coups in recent years. More than 10 have occurred since 2020, forcing people caught in the crossfire to flee the region entirely to seek safety on other shores.
“If I had to return to Guinea, I could not live safely,” Oumar says. “I fear that the police will kill me like they killed two of my friends. I am scared to be deported to my home country.”
Oumar left home in 2023, journeying by air, bus, and foot to Senegal then Turkey, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. It took approximately two months to reach the U.S. As a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor, he was detained at the border and sent to a children’s shelter in Phoenix. There, he connected with the Florence Project, which visits every unaccompanied child detained in Arizona, to inform them of their rights and offer full legal representation.
Sofia Kalogirou, a Florence Project DOJ-accredited representative, worked with Oumar to petition for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), a humanitarian visa for minors. Sofia speaks French, which is Oumar’s second language, and they built a strong rapport as she advocated for his freedom.
During his ten months in the children’s shelter, Oumar learned to speak conversational English, and to read and write. He is a quick and eager learner.
Yet, in Guinea he had to quit school after sixth grade after his father died, because he had to work with his mother selling vegetables at a market to help support his family.
Having remained resilient through so many hardships, Oumar shared the following wisdom: “When I see bad things happening, I first think “When things are really difficult,” he adds, “I think about the things that I can control and differentiate them from the things I cannot control. about my father. Even though he passed away when I was younger, I still think about the life advice he gave me. He would tell me to have courage, be strong, be good to people, and to have good morals.”
Enduring ten months in a shelter where he had very little agency—children have to ask permission to use the bathroom and are forbidden from cooking their own meals or leaving the facility without Oumar.
“Every time the shelter would tell me, ‘You’re going to see your attorney today,’ it was like being told, you’re going to be free,” Oumar says, regarding his desire to move on and build a new life. “That’s how I felt every time I had an appointment with my legal team and I’ll never forget the work the Florence Project did for me.”
Working with Sofia, Oumar was approved for the SIJS visa. His Florence Project legal team also enrolled him in a program in Oklahoma that offers lodging to unaccompanied minors after they age out of the government-run shelter system. He is now applying for a work permit so he can begin earning money to support himself and his family back in Guinea. He wants to train to become an electrician or long-haul truck driver.
In the meantime, Oumar has found an Indian grocery store that sells the ingredients he needs to cook traditional West African cuisine. He feels grateful to be independent and free. “I can cook the food I like to eat. If I want, I can go outside, play with my friends, play soccer or basketball. I have a phone to talk to my family and friends. It’s very different from how it was when I was [detained] in Arizona,” Oumar says.
The joy he showed in his celebratory photoshoot in Oklahoma City brought tears to Sofia’s eyes. What sustains her hope and resilience is seeing her clients become empowered and enjoy experiences they were deprived of before.
A lot of her clients fear for their cases under the new administration. “We’re uncertain wondering how our work will be affected,” Sofia shares, putting the situation in perspective, “but our clients are worried how their lives will be affected. And they’ve already come so far.
“When they ask me, ‘What’s going on?’ I try to give some reassurance and help them not feel scared…I want to remove that fear. I want them to feel all the work we did.” confident in their situation. I tell them to remember all the work we did.”
*pseudonym used to protect privacy.