Officials offer no explanation for why Hussein and his family were accepted and others were rejected, left behind in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey in refugee camps, makeshift shelters, squalid apartments, or worse. The UNHCR and the State Department do not discuss individual cases.
"Some of these first cases were just really lucky," said Sarah Ivory, director of the Church World Service's refugee program in Greensboro. "They were just processed early before there was any backlog."