In 2017, Catholic Charities of Fort Worth reached out to Fatma Marouf, a law school professor at Texas A&M University. Marouf, who directs the school’s immigrant rights clinic, seemed like a natural ally for the Catholic group, the only organization in the region taking federal money to assist immigrant and refugee children arriving in the United States without a parent or legal guardian.
Marouf says she felt both a professional and personal calling to help after she toured Catholic Charities’ Fort Worth shelter, where some of the kids were housed. When she got home that night, Marouf raised the idea of fostering a refugee child with her wife, Bryn Esplin, a bioethics professor at the university’s medical school. The couple, who had tried unsuccessfully to have their own child, quickly got excited about fostering.
