The Jerusalem Post:

When Haroun got the phone call he had been waiting on for almost 10 years, he told the caller to hang up. It was too risky for a Jew in Iran to take such a call — authorities could be monitoring his phone. 

“Call me back on WhatsApp,” he said, putting faith in the messaging app’s promise of privacy and encryption. 

It was early last year and a representative from the refugee agency HIAS, formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, needed to tell Haroun that his turn had come.

As long as Haroun passed an FBI background check, he’d soon be able to settle in the United States under a special program for persecuted religious minorities. The sudden news came thanks to a decision by the Biden administration to relaunch the so-called Lautenberg Program for Iranians; it had shut down when Donald Trump enacted a travel ban on a group of Muslim-majority countries at the start of his first term in office in 2017.

Haroun was ecstatic. He had tried nearly everything in his quest to leave Iran and come to the United States, unsuccessfully applying for student and work visas.

“It was like seeing a miracle with your own eyes,” he said in a recent interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, recalling the moment HIAS called. ”You simply can’t believe what it felt like. All I’ve wanted is to practice my religion freely.”

Haroun, who is in his early 30s, began making preparations in secret, telling almost no one about his plans. When applying for a passport, he lied, telling Iranian authorities he hoped to vacation abroad. They questioned him, but eventually approved his request, allowing him to leave as a tourist. 

Haroun made it into the United States, to settle in Los Angeles, in late December, and it was just in time. Three weeks later, on the day Trump returned to the White House, the new president signed an executive order indefinitely suspending the admission of refugees. The order closed the country to 700 Iranian Jews who had applied for refugee status through HIAS, including Haroun’s parents, siblings, and cousins. These Jews were among more than 13,000 applicants from other religious minorities in Iran, including Christians, Baha’is, Sabean-Mandaeans, and Zoroastrians.

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