FERGUS FALLS, Minnesota (AP) — A Minnesota woman who worked as an agricultural adviser in the hinterlands of Afghanistan has been using her own time and money to get the Afghans who worked for her program out of the country.
So far, five of the men and their families have made it out with Caroline Clarin’s help. The 12 agricultural specialists, all traditional Afghan men, formed a deep, unexpected bond with their boss.
Caroline Clarin, right, talks with her wife, Sheril Raymond, as their dog, Iorek, looks out the window at their home in Dalton, Minn., Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. Raymond worries more than Clarin about money they’ve spent to bring families over from Afghanistan, and she finds the government fee of $575 per application for humanitarian parole outrageous. But she also acknowledges they cannot step back now. “When we bring in a family, they become our family,” she said. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Ihsanullah Patan, left, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, sits for a portrait with Caroline Clarin, right, whom he worked with in Afghanistan, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, at his home in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. A U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in Afghanistan, Clarin along with her wife have been using their own time and money to get Afghans who worked for her program out of the country. Those who have started their life in the remote town of Fergus Falls near the North Dakota border say they consider them family. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Pigs roam the farm of Caroline Clarin, left, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, as they pause along the water’s edge for a photo in Dalton, Minn., Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. Clarin has helped get five of her former employees and their families in Afghanistan into the U.S. since 2017, while her wife has helped them rebuild their lives in America. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Sheril Raymond, left, and her wife, Caroline Clarin, look out from their front door in Dalton, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. When Clarin was in Afghanistan, it was the longest she and Raymond had been apart since they started dating in 1988. Raymond, who cares for the chickens, pigs and other animals on their farm, would do video calls often, staying online even after Clarin had fallen asleep. Two years after Clarin returned, they married in August 2013 when same-sex marriage became legal in Minnesota. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
The setting sun illuminates a barn near the home of Caroline Clarin and Sheril Raymond in Dalton, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Surrounded by farmland stretching to the North Dakota border, the landscape is dominated by barns, grain elevators and the spires of a Bethlehem Lutheran Church, a reflection of the region’s Scandinavian roots. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Caroline Clarin, right, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, prepare dinner at their home in Dalton, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. So far, the couple has spent just under $10,000 since May bringing over families from Afghanistan. Raymond keeps the tally in a notebook. “It does make me a little nervous because we’ve lived on the edge for so long,” said Raymond, who sews her dresses, knits hats, and bakes bread. “So I work another year before retiring,” Clarin, 55, answers with a shrug. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
A girl plays on a giant otter sculpture in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. It is a place where neighbors pay unannounced visits to say “hi” and people greet the postmaster by name. It is also staunchly Republican. Fergus Falls is the county seat of Otter Tail County, which voted twice for former President Donald Trump. But people in town say friendships and family take precedence over political views. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Caroline Clarin, who worked as an agricultural adviser in Afghanistan, works in her basement on applications to get the Afghans who worked for her program out of the country, in Dalton, Minn., Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021. Clarin has vowed to get all her guys out. Since the Taliban took control of the country in August, she has been starting most days around 3 a.m. when she quietly makes her way to her basement office, hours before she heads to her job in Fergus Falls as a U.S. Department of Agriculture wetlands restoration engineer. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Fog hovers before dawn as a pedestrian walks through downtown Fergus Falls, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. Caroline Clarin, who worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in Afghanistan, and her wife have helped two of her former employees and their families resettle in Fergus Falls. Two other Afghan families Clarin helped chose to settle in Austin, Texas, and San Diego, partly because in both places there are mosques, halal butcher shops and established Afghan communities. None of that exists in Fergus Falls. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Sala Patan, 9, walks with his brothers. Ali, 7, left, and Maiwan, 12, rear right, to catch the bus to school outside their apartment in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Everything is new for the Patan children. Sala befriended a neighbor boy and jumped for the first time on a trampoline while Maiwan decorated his first pumpkin. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
The photo of an Afghan woman hoping to flee Afghanistan sits with her application on the desk of Caroline Clarin, who worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser in Afghanistan, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021, in Dalton, Minn. Besides the guys from her program still in Afghanistan, she is aiding other Afghans, including several women. “Why US government did this to us? Why did they leave us behind?,” one texts. Desperate pleas for help from more Afghans keep popping up in her phone as word spreads of her efforts. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Peppers sit on the dining table of Caroline Clarin at her farm in Dalton, Minn., after she picked them from a garden she in part set up to grow vegetables for Afghan families she’s helped relocate locally, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Caroline Clarin, right, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, sit in their living room with their dogs, Daisy, left, and Iorek, in Dalton, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August, texts from those Clarin worked with who remain have grown more urgent and she says she can “feel the panic increasing” as winter approaches and food shortages grow. She is trying to save them one by one, doing it all from the 1910 Minnesota farmhouse she shares with her wife, drawing from retirement funds to help a group of men who share her love of farming. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Ali Patan, 7, right, talks with his teacher, Hannah Herzog, at his locker during a first-grade class at Adams Elementary School in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Ali and his brothers wore their traditional Afghan clothes because their teachers told them that on the Friday before Halloween the kids could “dress up,” something that was lost in translation but went unnoticed as the other kids excitedly showed them their costumes. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
A patron walks behind a stained glass window of a Viking while entering the Viking Cafe in Fergus Falls, Minn., Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. Fergus Falls is a place where neighbors pay unannounced visits to say “hi” and people greet the postmaster by name. It is also staunchly Republican in a county which voted twice for former President Donald Trump. But people in town say friendships and family take precedence over political views, and there is broad empathy for the struggle of immigrants since many people’s parents, grandparents or great grandparents came from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Caroline Clarin watches the flames of a bonfire at her home in Dalton, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Clarin knows she cannot save everyone, but she’s determined to help those she can. After she left Afghanistan in 2011, she was consumed by anger over her program being gutted as the U.S. government changed its priorities. “When I got on the plane, it was like leaving my family on the helipad,” she said. “I felt like I deserted them.” (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Ihsanullah Patan, an agricultural specialist and refugee from Afghanistan, talks on the phone as Caroline Clarin, left, whom he worked with in Afghanistan, stands in his apartment in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Patan, who speaks Dari and Pashto, translates documents for Clarin for the visa applications. He worries about his former colleagues, who remain his close friends. “I hope that one day they can also come here and we will make a big Afghan kind-of-family over here,” he said. “All of them want to come here to Fergus.” (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
A U.S. flag stands in the room as Ihsanullah Patan, left, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, meets with job counselor Clara Wegsheid at Minnesota Community and Technical College in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Patan misses his career back in Afghanistan. Most U.S. employers do not recognize degrees from Afghan universities so he plans to return to school to earn a U.S. degree. For now, he is training to be a commercial truck driver. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, takes an English test at Minnesota Community and Technical College in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Patan stays in contact with some of the farmers back home and proudly shows photos on his iPhone of the tiny stems he distributed that are now trees several feet tall. One farmer texted him to say his harvest is feeding his family as millions of others in the country face severe hunger. That offers some solace after seeing his homeland fall to the Taliban. “We educated one generation and those fathers will tell it to their sons,” Patan said. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, puts the hood up for his daughter, Sujda, 5, after picking her up from daycare in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021. Only months after they arrived, the Patan family already feels at home. “In Fergus Falls, they have really good people, really friendly people,” Patan said as he drove his minivan down the tree-lined streets. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Ali Patan, 7, right, shovels dirt while looking for worms with his brothers, Sala, 9, left, and Maiwan, 12, center, and cousins, Laiba, 7, in dress, and her brother, Haiwad, 9, rear right, while visiting the farm of Caroline Clarin in Dalton, Minn., Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. “They are kinda free,” Ihsanullah Patan, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, says of his kids now, recalling how bomb blasts in Kabul caused them to miss school more than once. They still carry the trauma. When fireworks were shot off for Fourth of July this summer, Patan called his cousin in a panic and asked if the town was being bombed. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Sara Sundberg holds up a workbook while teaching online an English lesson at Minnesota State Community and Technical College to Sediqa Patan, a refugee from Afghanistan who recently arrived in Fergus Falls, Minn., Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2021. “When she came, she didn’t know what to do with a pencil,” said Sundberg, holding together her thumb and index finger tightly at the tip as if squeezing something. Five months later, her handwriting is “meticulous,” and her pronunciation is excellent, Sundberg said. She’s even learning to say Minnesota with the long “oooo.” (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Ihsanullah Patan, left, a horticulturist and refugee from Afghanistan, has lunch with Caroline Clarin, right, whom he worked with in Afghanistan, and her wife, Sheril Raymond, at his home in Fergus Falls, Minn., Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. Patan considers Clarin and her wife family. His three sons and daughter call them their “aunties.” In fact, he’s decided to live in nearby Fergus Falls, a town of 14,000, instead of moving to a larger city with an Afghan transplant community. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Caroline Clarin rides with Ali Patan, 7, as he drives her riding mower at her home in Dalton, Minn., Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. For the Patan family, Clarin and her wife have been a comfort in a strange place. “When we are going to their house, we feel like we went to Afghanistan and we are going to meet our close relatives,” Ihsanullah Patan, Ali’s father said. (AP Photo/David Goldman) 
Caroline Clarin, right, hugs Haiwad Massoodi, 9, on a visit by his father, Sami, rear left, and Sami Massoodi’s cousin Ihsanullah Patan, right, and Patan’s son, Ali, 7, at her farm in Dalton, Minn., Saturday, Oct. 30, 2021. Clarin was consumed by anger over her program being gutted by the U.S. government. “I felt like I deserted them,” she said about Massoodi, Patan and the other Afghans she worked with. Patan waited seven years for a special visa. When Clarin recently picked him up at the airport she was consumed with joy. “It was like my son came home,” she said. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Her wife, Sheril Raymond, has been helping the families start their life in the remote town of Fergus Falls near the North Dakota border. The Afghans say they consider them family.
