Ali Sayyid, father of six, tries to quickly change direction when his children hear the sound of an ice cream truck coming down a New York City street. He can’t afford it. “In Afghanistan, life was good and they were eating everything,” says Sayyid, who was a civil engineer before the Taliban’s 2021 takeover. He fled with his family first to Brazil and then across the southern border into the U.S., an epochal journey that landed him not only in a new land, but also in its politics.
Sayyid is among more than
