Patan stays in contact with some of the farmers back home and proudly shows photos on his iPhone of the tiny stems he distributed that are now trees several feet tall. Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, takes an English test at Minnesota Community and Technical College in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. “It was like my son came home,” she said. When Clarin picked them up at the airport in Minneapolis at midnight for the three-hour drive back to Fergus Falls, she was consumed with joy. After he texted her that two of his close friends had just been killed, Clarin withdrew $6,000 from a retirement fund to get him and his family on a commercial flight to Minnesota before the Taliban took control of the country this summer. The most recent of her friends to escape was Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist who waited seven years for a special immigrant visa. “When I got on the plane, it was like leaving my family on the helipad,” she said. military bases as resettlement agencies struggle to keep up.Ĭlarin knows she cannot save everyone, but she’s determined to help those she can.Īfter she left Afghanistan in 2011, she was consumed by anger over her program being gutted as the U.S.
forces withdrew, more than 70,000 Afghans have come to the United States and thousands are languishing at U.S. She’s driven by fear her team will be killed by the Taliban, though the new government has promised not to retaliate against Afghans who helped the U.S. She calls senators to apply pressure so they don’t languish like the thousands of other visa applications in the backlogged system for Afghans who supported the U.S. She has stepped up her efforts, working endless hours, diligently tracking their visa applications. Since the Taliban seized power in August, texts from those remaining have grown more urgent and Clarin says she can “feel the panic increasing” as winter approaches and food shortages grow. since 2017, while her wife has helped them rebuild their lives in America. Now Caroline Clarin is trying to save them one by one, doing it all from the 1910 Minnesota farmhouse she shares with her wife, drawing from retirement funds to help a group of men who share her love of farming.Ĭlarin has helped get five of her former employees and their families into the U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in the region for two years. In the process, the 12 agricultural specialists, all traditional Afghan men, formed a deep, unexpected bond with their boss, an American woman who worked as a U.S.
The university-educated Afghans helped turn land in an overgrazed, drought-stricken and impoverished region in eastern Afghanistan into verdant gardens and orchards that still feed local families today. soldiers called them “Caroline’s guys.” They transformed farms in a war zone - risking their lives for the program she built, sharing her belief that something as simple as apple trees could change the world. (AP Photo/David Goldman)įERGUS FALLS, Minnesota - The U.S. His three sons and daughter call them their "aunties." In fact, he's decided to live in nearby Fergus Falls, a town of 14,000, instead of moving to a larger city with an Afghan transplant community.
Patan considers Clarin and her wife family.
Ihsanullah Patan, left, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, has lunch with Caroline Clarin, right, whom he worked with in Afghanistan, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, at his home in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct.