Hearing from my daughter, Selena Sherzad
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- March 2, 2025
- 1027
This week I’m welcoming Selena Sherzad, my daughter, to the column. She lives with her husband Sediq in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I invited her to share her story on her policy work within refugee settlement and housing and the heartache of losing her job in the sweeping cuts that have taken place. Thank you for taking the time to write for us, Selena.
The world of refugeehood has long existed for people caught in unfathomable events like war, persecution and famine who are forced to leave their homes and flee through treacherous forests, knee-deep snowy valleys, rushing rivers and dry deserts to find safety. When a land that has been in your family for generations suddenly becomes hostile, what do you do?
For many, protecting one’s own family is the only option, and as international law dictates, everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution in other countries. Globally, the United States ranks second in receiving the most refugees, with 2024 hitting a historic 100,000 refugees in the past 30 years.
On Jan. 20 the Trump administration signed the Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program, which indefinitely paused the United States commitment to resettlement families, reuniting loved ones and halting our legacy of welcome to vulnerable populations across the world.
Families that had been waiting years to be accepted by USRAP who had just finished extreme background vetting, medical screenings and cultural orientation were notified they would no longer be taking the flight that had been scheduled in a few days to take them to the States. Funding from the administration stopped, putting resettlement organizations in extreme debt and being forced to lay off staff.
It was within two weeks of this executive order my phone rang, and it was my director. “I’m so sorry Selena, but you’ve been furloughed.” I was a policy and advocacy manager at the refugee resettlement agency Church World Service, an organization I had been with for nearly 3 1/2 years. I would later learn 85% of my organization had been laid off the same day. Waves of heartache crushed the nation’s humanitarian aid sector, and I had no way of running from it.
My work with refugees and asylum seekers began in Athens, Greece, working in a refugee camp of 2,000 people representing nearly 30 nationalities. Walking the dusty corridors of this makeshift town that housed families and meals and laughs and tears and languages widened my eyes to a degree I could never see differently.
What started as a foreign context I wanted to help became a community I belonged to, where our shared humanity stitched connections I could never rip up but instead slowly tore up the generalizations, headlines and stereotypes that had slyly been built within me to believe these people were to be feared.
Losing my job reverberates into multiple facets. Not only is it my and my husband’s primary income, but also it is the primary source of funds for my in-laws living in Afghanistan.
My mother-in-law was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer last year, and while the support of my community helped with the initial costs to travel to Pakistan and receive treatment for the beginning phase, cancer is a long journey, and our funds have done their best to stretch as wide as they could to support this process. Financial despair impacts family commitments, mortgage and utility commitments, and the loss of health insurance threatens access to fertility treatments as well.
Today, initiatives, programs and entire departments are being halted with one signed executive order after another. Let it be known I am only one voice of thousands who have been uprooted from their jobs. And we are not only sad, but angry, because despite our positions been ripped out from under us, the harm we are causing to the people we support — refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, veterans, homeless, LGBTQ+, disabled and more — is far worse and casts a mirror on our country’s priorities.
Yet despite the heavy whirlwind of panic the administration has caused, supporting each other is one of the most important commitments we can hold on to. We must each take a moment to process what is happening, take a breath and keep going. My decade of working alongside refugees and asylum seekers will not end because my professional position has been removed.
Growing up in Holmes County, I was always taught to love your neighbor, treat foreigners as your own, pray for your enemies. We must stand up for what we believe in as radical as it might seem. So I will keep advocating for the United States Refugee Admissions Program to be restored, for immigrants to be treated with dignity and for us all to honor our shared humanity.
We all are deserving of support and protection, such that we are all able to stand up for one another, even when our nation’s leaders tell us otherwise.
Melissa Herrera is a reflective writer who captures the beauty and sorrow of change. With a career spanning 14 years as an opinion columnist and the publication of two books, she resides in Stark County with her husband and four cats. She writes to preserve memories. You can reach her at junkbabe68@gmail.com.