The Long Road Home

A refugee’s journey through uncertainty, bureaucracy, and the search for safety

By Grace Asiegbu 

Emma Yaaka arrived at Chicago’s O'Hare Airport in 2017 after three years in a Kenyan refugee camp. By the time he made it stateside, he had endured over 40 interviews repeating his trauma, countless security screenings, and years of living in limbo. 

“It's really very hard to live in, to live the life of not knowing where you are heading and where you are coming from. You don't define where you belong,” Yaaka said. “It's really hard.”

For many Americans, refugee resettlement seems straightforward enough – leave a dangerous place, arrive at a refugee shelter, wait your turn, then get sent to your final destination. However, refugee resettlement is a systematically uneven process, one that can have twists, turns, and no clear timeline. Layer on the Trump administration’s pauses and revocations, and the emotional strain piles up: uncertainty over family reunification, navigating systems you barely understand, and the constant weight of knowing your safety isn’t guaranteed.

Emma fled to Nairobi, Kenya, in 2014 after years of threats and violence because of his sexuality in his home country, Uganda. Leaving home was painful, but the threat of staying home was worse.

“I didn’t leave my country because I was looking for comfort or more opportunities. I had a family I could rely on. I had friends. I had a community I loved very much,” Yaaka said, wistfully. “Threats, fear, harassment became a part of my daily life, so I couldn’t bear being there. The only way for me was to look for safety and protection somewhere else—or anywhere else.”

By the time refugees reach a settlement camp—often in a third country they’re not from or have any ties to— they are already carrying the psychological weight of displacement. Language barriers, culture shock, and unfair treatment from locals are all issues these same people fleeing persecution face. 

“I left everything—I left my country with nothing apart from one t-shirt, which was red. I did not know anyone in Nairobi,” Emma lamented. 

One of the first things he had to do was register with the United Nations Refugee Agency, or UNHCR. That’s when the process “officially” begins, and the marathon of vetting checks comes into play. For refugees being resettled to the United States, the verification process takes on average 36 months (three years). Despite this, refugees can languish far beyond the official timeline—for upwards of 17 years, according to UNHCR estimates of long-term displacement worldwide. 

Maya Oyarbide-Sanchez, wellness program director at RefugeeOne, a Chicago-based nonprofit supporting refugee resettlement and integration, said the mental impact of waiting for an indeterminate amount of time is detrimental all on its own. 

“If you're in the space where you don't know how long you're going to be there, in limbo in terms of your legal status—not having access to the resources that everyone else who lives there has—that also has a huge impact of even your own self-concept, how you come to understand your place in the world, and what options exist to you versus other people,” Oyarbide-Sanchez said.  

Emma’s wait time to enter the U.S. may have been much shorter than the UN’s global average of 17 years, but his number of interviews—46—was a number she balked at.

“There could be an empowering element to retelling your story, but that’s not the prevailing experience I hear about,” Oyarbide-Sanchez said. In these interviews, she continued, the point is to vet a person’s story—picking apart their application in different ways to ensure things “match up.” That’s why refugees go through so many interviews. They are supposed to retell the same or similar stories in excruciating detail with little to no deviation over years. 

“What we also know about folks who have gone through some type of traumatic experience is that sometimes holding on to small details, pieces of information…that's not how our trauma brain works when we're trying to survive something,” Oyarbide-Sanchez explained.

These interview spaces—where refugees must rehash their experiences, undergo health and fitness screenings, submit to multiple background checks and ideological tests—aren’t meant to foster an empowering relationship, she continued. They’re all about efficiency, security, and protocol, leaving some refugees feeling disillusioned, at best. 

“To live through something, and officials actually questioning you about it can add to this feeling of, ‘I’m not supported, I’m not believed,’” she added.

There’s no one singular refugee experience. Some countries offer refugees more rights and autonomy than others. According to Oyarbide-Sanchez, a large part of what determines a refugee’s path is the country they flee to. In Emma’s case, Kenya didn’t award refugees work permits, which meant he and other asylum seekers could only rely on humanitarian relief or mutual aid with fellow refugees. Especially since local Kenyans were accusing refugees of “stealing their resources.” 

After years in limbo in Nairobi, Emma finally arrived in the United States. But his time spent waiting didn’t disappear when his plane landed in Chicago. His experience is not typical, but it is revealing. The details of refugee journeys vary widely, shaped by geography, policy, and chance. What remains consistent is the uncertainty built into the process itself.

Resettlement, then, is not a single moment of arrival. It is a prolonged negotiation with bureaucracy, memory, and belonging — one that often reshapes people long before they are finally allowed to feel safe.

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