In the chaos that swallowed Afghanistan as the U.S. withdrew its last troops in August 2021, thousands of Afghans, their friends and their families called anyone they could think of for help.

Jenna Jaffe, the immigration specialist for Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), was one of dozens of congressional staffers who fielded those desperate phone calls.

They were in a nightmare, she recalled. A family put her on the phone with a U.S. Marine so she could explain that they had authorization to enter the U.S. as refugees, only for him to hang up on her. He was like, Maam, maam, slow down. They told us to look out for documents that are certain colors, and thats all I know. Goodbye, Jaffe said.

With everything disintegrating, Jaffe and another congressional caseworker cobbled together a group of Capitol Hill staffers who traded scraps of information from the Pentagon and State Department and all-hours updates from constituents in Kabul.

One of those staffers was Nicky Leingang, the director of constituent services for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

Omars office had received more than 2,000 pleas for help. In part this was because of Omars high-profile background as a refugee; people had faith she would help. But another reason was Leingang, who over the years had helped countless constituents wrestle with complex immigration cases and had gained a reputation in Minneapolis large immigrant community for being unusually relentless. A local immigration attorney said the refrain goes, Have you called Omar?