The Lost Boys of Sudan Aren’t Boys Anymore

I was raised in areas the Sudan People’s Liberation Army controlled. The army’s soldiers were fighting a war without salaries, so they’d enter villages and move from house to house searching for food. They seized anything of value, mostly livestock, and conscripted men as porters. Vicious soldiers beat and sometimes raped or killed people. Commanders ordered soldiers to loot. The soldiers obeyed.

As a child, I was afraid of them. Their braggadocio, the beatings, the rattle of the machine guns. There’s one incident I’ve never forgotten: the day they took my milk and left me with nothing. I cried through the night. My mother admonished me, but I cried and cried. Finally, she said: “If you continue crying, then they will come for you.” I kept quiet.

These memories were with me when I arrived at La Donna Drive in Tempe, Arizona, on a rainy Saturday afternoon last November. Jany and Chol, both now in their 40s, live there together with their two teenage daughters in a single-family house. In the sitting room, an old sectional sofa faces a low rectangular table covered with books, including a photo book of South Sudanese immigrants’ children at a summer camp. Framed photos of Jany’s days as a champion high school runner decorated the shelves. In one he crosses the finish line of a 3-mile race. 

In front of me, Jany negotiated with the then 13-year-old girls about a trip to the mall. 

“The rule is you can’t be in the same place as last time,” he told them. There was a spot in the mall where a stranger had approached his daughter, Nyateny.

“Yeah,” Evonna, Chol’s daughter, replied.

“Chol will drop you off,” Jany said. “Make sure you stay in public. Don’t be by yourself. If your friends drag you somewhere else, you have to say no.”

“They are your friends,” Nyateny muttered at Evonna.

Surrounded by the trappings of suburban Valley comfort, it was hard for me to imagine that these middle-aged suburbanites were once child soldiers no different from the ones that kept me up all night years ago crying over stolen milk.

Although SPLA soldiers like Chol and Jany should be revered for their role in achieving South Sudan independence, they inflicted wounds on the minds of many South Sudanese, like myself, that remain till today. It is a complicated tale and the memories of their cruelty continue to be passed from one generation to the next.  

America pulling up the ladder

The two scared kids thought their lives were over. 

It was the late 1980s and they were trapped inside one of the world’s deadliest conflicts — the Second Sudanese Civil War — that splintered what was once Africa’s largest country into two.

Military officials conscripted the boys, Chol Deng and Jany Deng (who have the same last name but aren’t related), into the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, a guerrilla movement that waged a war against the Islamic government in Khartoum.

If they were child soldiers today, there would be no way for them to have landed in Arizona and into the homes of foster families who loved them and nurtured them into adulthood. They would have remained teenage killers in a war or ended up dead on a battlefield.

Chol and Jany were brought to the United States by a humanitarian rescue mission. The Trump administration has gutted that kind of pathway to safety. Pondering the alternate lives they would have lived is like a cruel twist on It’s a Wonderful Life. The races they won running track for local high schools would never be awarded. Their daughters, who have effortlessly integrated into Valley life, would never have been born. The nonprofit they helped found would never have existed.

The war displaced about 20,000 children. Jany and Chol were among 3,800 refugees who made it to America and were assigned to families. Both are now U.S. citizens. But they didn’t come over during the Draconian depths of the second Trump administration.

Of the roughly 3,5000 refugees who came to America fleeing the civil war, 500 or so were minors — Jany and Chol among them. The generation of scarred children became known as the Lost Boys of Sudan. They were featured in many news stories in the 1990s and early 2000s. Eventually they fell out of the news. But the Lost Boys are still here. They’re older, wiser, grayer, paying taxes. They’re men who have had to find their way.

Chol, Jany and the others relied on a complex network of legal and bureaucratic organizations to make it from the chaos of border camps in eastern Africa to tranquil places like Tempe. The two key pillars of the operation were the United States Refugee Admissions Program and the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors program. 

One of Trump’s first actions as president in his second term was to effectively shutter the United States Refugee Admissions Program – essentially the Statue of Liberty program that provides for refugee resettlement. He signed an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025, declaring that letting kids like Chol and Jany into the country would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States” and suspending the program.

The other crucial lifeline, the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors program, still exists, barely. In 2026, the Trump administration lowered the admissions cap to 7,500 slots — the lowest number in U.S. history, and just 6% of the Biden administration’s cap of 125,000 refugees. Last May, Trump did make an additional 10,000 slots available, but only for white South Africans.

Trump also ordered an indefinite ban on processing green card applications for refugees who are already in the United States. And Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill banned refugees like the young Jany and Chol from getting SNAP benefits or Medicaid. Not that they could make it here in the first place. In January 2026, Trump indefinitely paused processing of refugees from Sudan and South Sudan, among dozens of other countries. If through some miracle they made it to the border, Department of Homeland Security agents would have turned them back. In essence, America is ensuring that any lost boys of 2026 will truly remain lost.

Jany’s journey

Today, in Tempe, you might find Jany Deng wearing shorts and a T-shirt, speaking in a booming voice. He is slim and has a welcoming demeanor. He was born in 1977 and by the age of 8 was herding his family’s cattle. The war, with its crackling sounds of heavy artillery, swept over the region and separated him from his parents. He fled to the eastern side of the country, towards the Ethiopian border.

“I met people from my village frantically looking for a safe place,” Jany said, a stutter occasionally coloring his accounts. “I saw floating dead bodies in some of the rivers we crossed.”

It took about six months for Jany and his fellow villagers to walk to Ethiopia in 1986. There he joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Then a change in leadership in Ethiopia forced the refugees to return to Sudan. 

While they were crossing a river on the way back, the Sudanese government bombed them, igniting a wave of panic. More than 2,000 refugees, mainly children, women and the elderly, drowned. “I saw people being swept away,” Jany said. “As young soldiers, we were taught to kill. In our minds, death can happen to anyone at any time.”

Jany and his fellow child soldiers had a piece of hard-bitten mantra they repeated to one another. It went: “If one dies today, then it’s because his or her day has come.” It helped, he said, to make the kids no longer fear death.

Jany returned to a home ravaged by war. His father had fled to another village. In 1992 he returned to the same camp in Ethiopia only to find it with fewer people and not enough food. He moved on to another refugee settlement. There he worked as a truck loader for a pittance. Because he spoke Amharic, he also found work as a translator.

The following year, Simon, his older half-brother, left for a refugee camp in Kenya. Jany found out where he went. He also learned that the U.S. State Department and other organizations had begun a resettlement process. Jany didn’t wait. He and a friend crossed to Kenya using money he saved from his menial camp jobs. It took them three difficult months to get there.  “It was another form of human trafficking,” Jany said. “I had to pay smugglers and truck drivers to clandestinely sneak us out from checkpoints at night.” 

When he arrived Jany was thrilled to be reunited with his half-brother Simon. But the celebration was brief. They needed to act fast. The resettlement process had already started. 

Jany and Simon landed in Phoenix in 1995. They were separated at the airport because Jany was under 18 and Simon was not. 

He was frustrated that they were being pried apart. He asked through a translator why they were doing that. The translator explained that he was under 18, and Simon was older than him. He would live with other refugees around the same age. 

“I was upset about living alone without my brother, but I kept it to myself,” Jany said.

Jany would see each other only a few times after that. Simon was killed during an encounter with police in 1997.

Jany was assigned to a foster family. He started attending high school even though he had no education outside of war. It was a scary time for him. He could barely communicate. But he joined the track team, and started to make friends and improve his English. Three years after landing in Phoenix, Jany was an Arizona state track champion. 

“I had to study hard to pass my classes because if I don’t pass them, then I can’t run,” he said.

Jany credits his success to his late foster mom, Mary Tablada. There were five refugees in Tablada’s house: Jany and another Sudanese refugee, a Cuban, a Vietnamese, and two Haitians. “We were living in her house as her kids, supporting us with everything, including our classes,” Jany said with a chuckle. Tablada held two jobs, including as a professor at Arizona State University. Her busy schedule didn’t stop her. “She was an amazing woman,” Jany said.

Chol’s Journey

Chol is a quiet man with brown eyes. He wears loose earrings in his stretched earlobes. He speaks slowly and seldom laughs. His way of talking reminds me of the army commanders who often came into our village looking for food and deserters.

Chol was about 12 years old when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army conscripted him in 1987. For three months, he walked and fed on wild fruits. He repeatedly fell on the unforgiving terrain and injured himself before he arrived at the Ethiopian border town where the soldiers had a camp. “We moved at night most of the time to evade being tracked by the Sudanese army,” Chol said. “The situation was harsh, especially for young ones like us.”

Chol estimated that there were more than 300 in the group, mostly children, escorted by senior soldiers. They moved barefoot, without proper clothes and food. Mosquitoes feasted on them. Thorns pricked their feet. They slept in the open without blankets. Many got sick. Some died before reaching the border. “As they crossed rivers, I saw a couple of people caught by crocodiles, and heard them cry,” he said.

In the border town, Chol began his education — three months of military training. The memories still haunt him. Fellow teen soldiers died of what he called “poor feeding.” He remembers corpses. He helped bury family members.

When commanders came to the camp and asked for people willing to go back and fight, he volunteered. The army’s victories attracted him even though friends from his village had died in the war. Chol narrowly survived an anti-missile bomb strike that left him partially deaf for months and killed six of his colleagues who were fighting by his side. “We lost a significant number of comrades,” Chol recalled. “Some of us who survived were by God’s grace.”

Chol arrived in Phoenix in 2000. His excitement was tempered by culture shock. He didn’t know how to flush a toilet or operate showerheads and water faucets. “I was one of the people with a mindset that going to a toilet in a house was not good,” he said with a grin. 

His foster family helped him adjust. English, especially its slang, was a problem. One time he came home and told his foster family that someone had asked him, “What’s up, dog?” He’d thought it was an insult and wanted to fight. They explained that the phrase was a friendly greeting.

Chol was surprised to see high school students holding hands or kissing. At first, he felt it was shameful. Over time, Chol adapted to American ways.

Chol enrolled in a high school and ran track. “I was very fast, but I could easily get tired,” he said. A coach introduced him to Jany. They soon started discussing the war and discovered how much they had in common. 

Growing up

Chol and Jany grew to thrive in America. Chol went to a local college where he trained to be a medical assistant. Jany followed a similar path, and earned a bachelor’s degree in social work at Arizona State University. 

In 2004, Jany helped found the Lost Boys Center in Phoenix to assist other child soldiers like himself with their adjustment to American life. The nonprofit taught young Sudanese refugees practical knowledge — how to apply for jobs, how to follow traffic rules, how to protect themselves from online scams. Both he and Chol worked there for a few years.

But life in America didn’t heal their past. Both men dealt with the horrors of war. And they encountered obstacles. Chol’s life began to unravel in 2009, during the global financial meltdown. He lost his job and struggled to find another. He moved to Texas to work at a meatpacking factory. His back hurt from long hours standing, cutting meat and lifting heavy carcasses. He was lonely and in pain. He became an alcoholic.

Jany kept in touch with Chol. When a mutual friend told him about Chol’s drinking, he persuaded Chol to move back to Arizona and stay with him. Chol resisted treatment. Jany, ever persistent, finally convinced him. Chol spent 45 days recovering at a local rehab center.

After his recovery, the rehab center hired him. Since then he has mentored others struggling with alcohol addiction. He credits the center and his friends for his survival. “I would have been dead by now,” Chol said. “I call myself a ‘sober gangster.’” Chol is now pursuing a bachelor’s degree in healthcare administration at Grand Canyon University. He wants to help other addicts in recovery.

Road to Fatherhood

Chol and Jany have become family. “I feel like we are brothers,” Jany said. “He wants me to do well — the same feeling I have for him. We are inseparable.” Their daughters are close too. They consider each other cousins. Chol’s daughter, Evonna, is in eighth grade. Jany’s daughter, Nyateny, is in ninth.

The girls attend different schools. Chol’s 10-hour weekday shift at the rehab center doesn’t begin until 2 p.m., so he drives them in the morning. Jany, who works part-time at the Lost Boys Center, picks them up in the afternoon.

Like Chol and Jany, Evonna runs track. Last year, she finished second in a relay in Tempe. Nyateny enjoys hip-hop and hopes to pursue a career in music.

Jany and Chol both love this country, even though they’ve noticed in recent years that it’s become less welcoming of people like them. Still, they trust America. The two friends said they have not experienced any mistreatment themselves despite the recent rise of anti-immigration sentiments. They hope their daughters’ biggest worries remain whether or not they can go to bed with their mobile phones or hang out at the mall.

I asked the girls how they feel living with their single fathers. “It’s good,” Nyateny responded, with typical teenage taciturnity.

Chol was ready to give them a ride to the mall. 

“Will you guys be sending money to Africa to help your relatives?” Jany asked the girls in a bantering way. Neither responded.

“Maybe it’s because they don’t know anyone back home,” Jany continued.

“Because I don’t,” Nyateny said.

“You guys need to grow up and look for jobs to send money home,” he continued poking.

“Can we go to the mall?” Evonna muttered.

“Can we go to Africa?” Chol replied jestingly.