David and Nancy put Afeez and Fuad on a bus to L.A.

BAMGBOYE ACCOMPANIMENT UPDATE

In September 2023, parishioners Nancy Clark and David Crosson picked up father and son Afeez and Fuad Bamgboye as they arrived by bus in San Francisco. At the end of February, Nancy and David put them on a bus to Los Angeles, where they have friends and a strong Nigerian community to welcome and support them. In between, the St. Mary’s-Sherith Israel Nueva Esperanza Accompaniment Team (NEAT) helped them find housing and furnishings, work, clothing, ESL classes, badly needed medical care, legal assistance to initiate asylum proceedings, and even an Arab-speaking soccer (football) team. Their move to Los Angeles places them within a Nigerian cultural community that will provide a warm and comfortable embrace as they continue to forge lives of independence and dignity within the United States.

Fearing for their lives, Afeez and Fuad’s originally fled their native Nigeria to Brazil. After taking a year walking from Brazil to the United States, they entered the country at a California border crossing and housed in a private detention Center in Calexico. The immigrant support organization Imperial Valley Equity in Calexico contacted Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, in Oakland, seeking a legal sponsor in order to secure the Bamgboyes’ release on bond. Nancy Clark volunteered as that sponsor.

Then Casa Marianella, an organization in Austin (yes, the one in Texas) worked with an attorney in San Diego to secure the Bamgboyes’ release. On the last day possible, the National Bail Fund Network secured bond through the Minnesota Freedom Fund, in Minneapolis. And now they have found a friend and a supportive community in Los Angeles. This is how God’s kingdom is realized: many, many people and one small miracle at a time.