PERPIGNAN, France — Mustafa Rafi, an Afghan electrical engineer, risked his life working with the U.S. military in his homeland. Because he faced a grave threat from the Taliban, he and his family were relocated to Sacramento in June 2015 thanks to a special immigrant visa.

Twenty days later, he was dead.

He was struck and killed by a car outside his dilapidated apartment complex while riding bicycles with his 7-year-old son, Omar. His widow, Malalai who could neither speak English nor drive, was left to care for their three children, including Omar who was severely injured in the accident.

Their ordeal was covered by The Sacramento Bee in a touching story about the funeral that was accompanied by an emotional image by staff photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. The daily story might have faded from public memory if another staff photographer, Renée Byer — who is married to Mr. Kitagaki — had not been moved by that image to dig deeper. The results of her exploration are on exhibit this week at the Visa Pour l’Image photo festival in Perpignan, France.

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Ms. Byer tracked down Omar by calling area hospitals, and after several weeks was granted access by Ms. Rafi and the hospital to chronicle their story. As she spent time in the Afghan community, Ms. Byer learned that many Afghans whose lives were endangered by working with the U.S. military had been relocated to the Sacramento area where they faced “violence and poverty, as they struggled in the sub-standard housing where resettlement agencies had placed them,” she said. Some were so hopeless, they saw suicide as their only relief.

“That’s just not acceptable in the United States,” she said.

The families she followed with a reporter, Stephen Magagnini, were struggling with post-traumatic stress, cultural differences and language barriers. Relocation agencies are only funded by the government to offer three months of support, then the Afghans are mostly on their own. After risking their lives working for the United States government, they are, she said, ensnared in a broken support system.

Visa Pour l’Image Coverage from the 2017 Visa Pour l’Image festival in Perpignan, featured on Lens. Land, Loss and Rebirth in Standing Rock

“They are engineers, they’re architects, they’re teachers, they’re doctors,” she said. “And they come over with a suitcase full of credentials and diplomas that translate to nothing here.”

They are working in near minimum wage jobs as security guards or butchers or commonly on the night shift troubleshooting iPhones at an Apple plant. Many of Ms. Byer’s subjects live in roach-infested, rundown housing complexes in dangerous neighborhoods.

Faisal Razmal, a former interpreter for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, lost sight in one eye when he was shot in the face with a flare gun during a robbery attempt by a suspected gang member inside his apartment complex in Sacramento. Though most of the families she chronicled were suffering, there was a bright spot: Yalda Kabiri, who was a translator for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, has started a day care business and is attending college.

They are thankful to be out of the war zone but are frustrated as they navigate a complicated transition. They miss their families back home, and sometimes their daughters are bullied because they wear hijabs. Worse, some of them are “threatening and attempting suicide from despair,” she said.

“The United States needs to do better with these people who put their lives on the line to help U.S. forces and who have come here already, tragically, suffering from being in a war zone to confront a life that neither you or I would ever want our families in.”

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