On September 8, the paper profiled a family from Sierra Leone that survived atrocities and attacks during the civil war in their country. “With three months of IRC financial aid and crash courses in American culture, the Boima family [has] joined the ranks of other international refugees who are building new lives in the city,” the paper wrote.

On September 18, the Reporter-News reported on a talk by a Meskhetian Turk refugee to the Abilene Interfaith Council. Claudine Ndayishimiye, an IRC case manager for the Abilene resettlement office, “praised the citizens of Abilene for their acceptance of the refugees, many of whom the do not speak English,” the paper reported.

It’s a very slow response to this crisis,” says Ellen Beattie, the IRC refugee resettlement director in Atlanta. ”There are literally millions of Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and the [Persian] Gulf states, and they are all in very precarious and dire circumstances there,” Beattie says. “They’re struggling economically, academically and [they're] unable to build a new life.