Durani smiled with pride as he showed a red, white and blue sign made of tinsel hanging on the front door of his South Milwaukee apartment. The shiny letters spelled out: “Land of the free.”

Keeping people safe and free has always been important to him, Durani said.

He was born in Afghanistan in 1981 in the midst of civil war.

Durani’s father was a unit commander in the Afghan Army, which put his family at risk when he was a child. Durani said two warlords were fighting inside the capital city of Kabul, and members of different ethnic groups were killing each other. His family had to flee to Pakistan on foot in the middle of the night.

“From the day I was born, I have seen nothing but war and instability in my country,” Durani wrote in his asylum application to the U.S.

He spent most

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