The Refugee Whose File Was Already Open

In 2019, a Syrian family arrived at a resettlement office in Louisville, Kentucky, exhausted from eighteen months of waiting. The father, Marwan Haddad, carried a folder of documents he assumed no one had read. But when caseworker Ellen Briggs greeted them, she spoke his daughter's name — Yasmin — and mentioned that the girl loved drawing birds. Marwan froze. He had never spoken to this woman.…