For one immigrant, Philadelphia Arabs is more than just a Facebook group — it’s a lifeline

On a typical day running the Philadelphia Arabs Facebook page, Mohammad Abuhillo posts a little bit of everything: traffic news, live videos from the Schuylkill River Trail, soccer watch parties, and Middle Eastern restaurant openings.

But one February day, Abuhillo received a message on his page: A man was shot in the head while delivering pizzas in North Philadelphia, and the victim was believed to be Arab. A few hours later, he received a call from a nurse-practitioner at Temple University Hospital who was familiar with the Facebook page.

“She said: ‘I believe he might be Algerian, and as far as we know he has no family. I don’t know what to do, but I know you guys always step up when somebody’s Arab,’” Abuhillo said.

Abuhillo dedicated his time over the course of the next few months to helping the shooting victim, Amin Benziane, and his family, whether helping with an expedited visa, gaining quick access to the police report, or just acting as a friendly face.

And it wasn’t just Abuhillo — much of the Arab community across Philadelphia lent a helping hand to Benziane when they found out about the tragedy on the Facebook page, exhibiting how immigrants come together to rebuild the supportive communities they left behind.

Abuhillo knows firsthand the need for a support system when in a new country.

He immigrated to the United States from his Palestinian home in 1981 — a time when there was no WhatsApp, Facebook, or FaceTime to help new immigrants connect to their homeland and build a new community here.

“Back then, if you needed the simplest thing, you would have to ask everybody you knew — and if your network was 10 people, and those people didn’t know the answer, you were out of luck,” Abuhillo said.

But the advent of the internet and social media shifted what can otherwise be a lonely immigration experience, making it easier for new American residents to find and build a larger community and support system. In Benziane’s case, the Philadelphia Arabs page and its nearly 40,000 followers were a lifeline.

It wasn’t the first time Benziane had a dangerous encounter while delivering pizzas.

Once, a man had held a gun to his head and demanded money, Benziane said. The 41-year-old gave him his money, and even offered his car. But on Feb. 7, the perpetrator didn’t even talk to Benziane — they just opened fire while he was driving, causing him to crash into a house after the bullet struck his head.

Benziane’s first thought when he woke up from a coma in Temple University Hospital was of his two children, now 9 and 6, who are in Algeria. He came to this country from Algeria in 2019 to visit his friends, but when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Benziane was stuck.

“There weren’t any flights to Algeria, so he stayed here and worked,” Benziane’s brother, Shirif, said in Arabic and French from the New York City home where he and his brother are staying. “When he talked to his friends, he saw there was an opportunity here to improve his situation in Algeria.”

Benziane started working as a delivery driver in New York, then came to Philadelphia. He had a plan to save up money to take home to his wife and kids.

Then he got shot.

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Thousands of miles away in Algeria, Shirif received a call from a friend. He didn’t say Benziane had been shot, only that there was a “firing accident” and that Benziane was alive and in the hospital. But Benziane’s family had no way of finding out more — because of the open investigation into Amin’s shooting, no one was allowed to visit Benziane in the hospital if they weren’t family members.

That’s when Abuhillo stepped in.

The nurse-practitioner told Abuhillo that Benziane was in critical condition, and that hospital policies allow people to “speak to God” if they’re at risk of dying. So Abuhillo called a local imam he knew, Mohammed Shehadeh of Al-Aqsa Islamic Society, and together they went to see Benziane two days after the shooting. Benziane was still in a coma, but Abuhillo and Shehadeh FaceTimed his family from the hospital room, and the doctor came on the call to explain Benziane’s medical condition.

“When the accident happened, we did not have any information because no one was allowed in Amin’s room,” said Shirif. “Before [Abuhillo] entered the picture, there were multiple versions. Every person would say something different. So praise be to God first, but then [Abuhillo] — we were able to know what the situation was, we were able to see [Benziane].”

Shirif was desperate to get to the United States and take care of his brother. But every friend he consulted told him the same thing: It would be too difficult for him to get a visa so quickly.

So Abuhillo put in a call to the Algerian Consulate in New York, explaining the situation. The consulate called the U.S. Embassy in Algeria, and the next day Abuhillo got a call back: “Tell Shirif to head to the U.S. Embassy and get his visa tomorrow at 3 p.m.”

“When I got to America, the first person I saw was [Abuhillo],” said Shirif. “It would have been harder if we [hadn’t] met him. The things we needed to do would have taken us 20 days without him — with him, they took just one day.”

After Shirif made it to this country, Abuhillo stayed in touch, and drove Shirif to the hospital when they found out Benziane had woken up from his coma three weeks after the shooting. He posted about Benziane’s situation on the Philadelphia Arabs Facebook page, garnering financial and emotional support from followers. One community member set up a GoFundMe page, raising nearly $6,000 for Benziane.

When Benziane needed a new U.S. visa, Abuhillo connected him with legal organizations that are working to get him a U visa, which is a visa for victims of crimes. And when he needed the police report of his incident for his visa application, Abuhillo called an Arab officer who pulled the report for them in five minutes.

“There were people that we didn’t know that helped,” said Shirif. “They did whatever they could — some were able to help him with a kind word, calling and asking about [Benziane’s] situation. He found a lot of support from the Arab community.”

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That was exactly why Abuhillo wanted to create his Facebook page in 2017 — to elevate the Arab community and culture and provide resources to the community, but also to tie the community together.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re Algerian, Palestinian, Iraqi, Lebanese — we are one community,” said Abuhillo. “And when you build a community that ties its hands together and says, ‘We’re going to support one another in every possible way,’ the resources literally become unlimited.”

When one person is in need, he said, everyone steps up. They may be missing their families back home, but they have a new one here.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city’s push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.