Last weekend, two groups of people arrived at Northern Virginia Community College: Afghan refugees recently airlifted out of Kabul, and locals who wanted to help them resettle in America.

“By [Saturday] morning, dozens of volunteers had assembled at the Annandale campus,” reports The Washington Post. “And by noon, the piles of donations had grown so high that volunteers had to turn some away.”

Many of the do-gooders were members of the local Afghan community. More from The Post:

Many of those who came with donations or to offer help were there because they knew what the new arrivals were going through: They, too, had family fleeing Kabul.

“We just want to share their pain,” said one man, Nasrul, who gave only his first name because his siblings’ lives are still in danger in Afghanistan. “We are not in Afghanistan, but we are in sorrow.”

The refugees were given places to sleep across campus. The college said they’d be transitory visitors; the U.S. government is set to ferry them to different military bases across the country. From there, permanent resettlement will be sorted out.

A local Fox affiliate adds more from the scene on the ground:

One volunteer said the Afghan refugees are glad to be safe, but they’re worried about their future.

“They are very sad because they left the life they were used to back home, they were so comfortable and coming to another country … there are things you have to start all over from, start from zero and those are the challenges they have told me, but we are here to help them in any way we can,” Sear Baluch, one volunteer, said.

The Post spoke with a man who worked for a Pakistani company that did work for the U.S. military:

He spent two nights outside the gate to get into the Kabul airport — but despite his pleas, he could not bring his wife and daughter with him because they did not yet have the proper paperwork, said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was still worried about their safety.

“It is difficult to be with a baby and be his mother and his father,” he said. “No one can feel my sensation. I repeatedly, repeatedly cried — this is his time to be with his mother.”

But he knew his baby could not remain in Afghanistan, and so he had to go, holding out hope that his wife and daughter would eventually be allowed to join him.

Another American citizen who recently fled Afghanistan, Ajmal Ahmadzai, told The Post he had waited outside the Kabul airport for 14 hours. “It was like going through a thousand zombies to make it to the gate,” he said.

One Virginia resident, Ahmad Wali, was ecstatic to be re-united with family members that managed to escape. “I’m really excited,” he told The Post. “As soon as they’re rested up, I’m going to take them to Washington, D.C., the Georgetown waterfront, so they can see some nice places.”

America’s messy effort to evacuate Afghans who aided in the war effort has been a black eye for the Biden administration, which failed to anticipate a rapid Taliban takeover of the country. Some reports indicate that Afghans who assisted the U.S. are already being targeted for retaliation.

But the roots of the crisis stretch back to the Trump administration. According to Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, Trump and senior advisor Stephen Miller continually undercut efforts to remove SIV’s – Afghans who received special visas because of their ties to the U.S. – despite pressure from the Pentagon.