Hundreds of West African asylum seekers have come to Philly since September. They haven’t found a lot of support.

The calls started in September.

Week after week, there were reports of new migrants arriving to Philadelphia. It started off slowly, with just a few people arriving each week, before quickly growing to dozens arriving each week. They were coming from Mauritania, Guinea, Liberia, and other West African countries. But the American life they were pursuing has so far turned out to be more bleak than they had dreamed.

Today, community organizers estimate that roughly 1,000 asylum seekers from West African countries have come to Philadelphia since the fall, and most of them have settled among Southwest Philadelphia’s large African immigrant communities. But the influx of new arrivals has gone largely unnoticed or ignored by Philadelphians, organizers say, leaving community organizations feeling overwhelmed and unsupported in providing care and resources for the migrants.

“It has been a really, really challenging few months,” said Madusu Samaora, president of the Liberian Mandingo Association of Pennsylvania. “We are a small nonprofit. … We cannot take on big projects, because we cannot afford it. We just organize ourselves and try to be there for each other.”

The sudden influx of asylum seekers, the majority of whom are men, has left community organizers perplexed, particularly because each migrant has a different story.

Kassim Amu Konneh, for example, worked at the same gas station as an accused criminal, and risked being murdered if he wouldn’t provide an alibi for the man. He left his home country of Liberia in December, traveled to Latin America to cross the southern border into the United States, and eventually made it to Philadelphia, where his uncle lives.

Mury Saranké Conde left his home country of Guinea in December following an increase in arrests of members of the political party Rassemblement du Peuple Guinéen, or Rally of the Guinean People, which was the ruling party of Guinea for nearly two decades until the president was overthrown in a coup d’état in 2021. Conde also made his way to Philadelphia through the southern border, but, unlike Konneh, had only an acquaintance in the city.

The majority of people who have arrived, including Conde and Konneh, are undocumented but looking to file asylum claims, according to organizers. And although each person’s story is different, some organizers point to common themes of government corruption, ethnic and gender-based discrimination, and lack of opportunity among the countries as an explanation for the influx.

“The increase in instability of the governments of our countries is making people leave the country,” said Mohammed Bashir, a local imam who has been involved in finding housing for the migrants. “They’ve been persecuted in their country for their ethnicity or race. There’s increasing poverty. The government in power has no mercy on the population … they just use corruption to enrich themselves.”

It wasn’t until roughly 100 migrants were brought to an October meeting of the Mayor’s Commission on African and Caribbean Immigrant Affairs that the city became aware of the surge in West African asylum seekers.

“It was an eye-opening experience for everyone, including us since there had been no media coverage on this new trend of arrivals from West African nations,” said Amy Eusebio, executive director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs.

Soon after that meeting, PHL City ID reported a 25 percentage point increase — from 3% to 28% — in the number of French-speaking City ID recipients from July to November of 2023. That’s when the collaborative efforts between the city and local organizations to address the needs of the newly arriving men began, with the city organizing numerous community resource fairs in Southwest Philly.

“It has been a really, really challenging few months.”

The need has been dire.

Because most came to Philadelphia by way of the southern border, they’ve only showed up with empty backpacks, Samaora said. Many were unprepared for the frigid Northeastern winter. Housing has been nearly impossible to come by, and although community members and places of worship have opened their homes to asylum seekers, organizers say there have been as many as 10 asylum seekers sleeping in one room because of the housing shortage.

Most important, organizers emphasized, these men came to the U.S. in hopes of making a life for themselves. They don’t want charity and handouts, organizers say — they want to work. But with the backlogged immigration system and cost of immigration legal fees, work authorization permits could take up to a year for the men to obtain.

What started out as an American dream, Bashir said, turned into disillusionment.

“The first thing on my mind was I will be able to improve my life and work, and further my education,” Konneh said of his decision to come to the U.S. “I came here Dec. 29. And since then, all I do is sit at home doing nothing. It’s extremely frustrating.”

Now, community organizers have been finding themselves scrambling to provide for the new arrivals — clothing, housing, food, work opportunity, English classes — all with little to no support from surrounding communities or from different levels of government, they say.

While they’ve been able to make progress by collaborating amongst themselves to coordinate relief efforts, the process has left organizers disillusioned, as well — especially when they reflect on other times Philadelphia has absorbed large numbers of migrants from countries such as Ukraine or Afghanistan.

The discrepancy in receiving new arrivals, organizers say, is likely due to race. When you’re Black and from an African country, Samaora said, “things run a little bit different.” Other organizers agreed.

“It’s not about pitting one immigrant group against another,” said Oni Richards, executive director of the African Family Health Organization (AFAHO). “But it was very clear that when the Ukrainian refugees came into Philadelphia, there was literally a red carpet rolled out, a lot of resources were put into place to receive them.

“Whereas now, it’s been the complete opposite for this group.”