Law school students help previously rejected Iraqi refugees resettle in US, other countries

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — As a Christian human rights activist in Iraq, Ban Jamil Yousef Katto lived in fear. Her priest and friends were killed in a church massacre and nearby explosions twice destroyed her apartment in Baghdad.

A documentary filmmaker referred Katto to Becca Heller Brooklyn, N.Y., a recent Yale Law School graduate who started the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project as a student. The group worked with officials to get her family evacuated to Jordan in January and is helping them resettle in the United States.

“Thank God, me and my family, now we are safe,” Katto, who is pregnant with her third child, said in a phone interview. “I thank Becca. She assisted so much.”

Heller doesn’t speak Arabic and acknowledges she’s no Middle East expert. But that didn’t stop her from starting a group that reports resettling more than 400 Iraqi refugees in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Ireland and Sweden.

“I think it’s an excellent initiative,” said Larry Yungk, senior resettlement officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington. “They’ve been effective. Certainly refugees are here in the United States because of work they did.”

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