After Fleeing Refugee Camp, Family Now Stuck in N.Y. : Exodus: The Anaheim residents spent months in squalor on Iraq-Kuwait border. Now, penniless on the East Coast, they must find a way to get home.

An Iraqi-born Anaheim couple and their two children, trapped for months in a squalid refugee camp on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, have made it back to the United States but are stranded in New York.

The Ali family is part of a group of 10 Americans or U.S. residents who ended up at the desolate desert camp with thousands of bedraggled refugees in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.

All 10 have reached the United States in recent days through the efforts of relief agencies, but the four Alis and a fifth man, an Iranian-born San Diego student, are still struggling to make the journey home to California.

“At the beginning, I was very happy coming back to the States and to my life,” Randa Ali said Friday by telephone from the lobby of a motel in Astoria, N.Y. “When I get back to Los Angeles, I’ll be not just happy . . . more than happy.”

A former waitress in Anaheim, Randa Ali and her family were in Iraq visiting relatives when the war broke out. Trapped, they spent nearly two months at the camp, a crowded, filthy collection of tents menaced by flies and packs of wild dogs and located near a Kuwaiti town called Abdali.

Relief workers and U.S. Embassy officials worked for weeks to put together the papers necessary to remove the Alis from the camp and put them onto a flight back to the United States.

Finally, they left the camp four days ago for Kuwait city and traveled via Cairo, Athens and Rome before landing in New York City, two suitcases to their name.

The Ali family made the trip under the auspices of the International Office of Migration, which cares for refugees. Once they set foot in New York, however, their status changed from “refugee” to “resident alien”--and the migration office can no longer help, according to U.S. Army Col. Bruce Macy, a civil affairs officer who managed the refugee camps.

Macy befriended the Alis in Kuwait. From his home in Freehold, N.J., he is now trying to help the family find a way back to Southern California.

Penniless, the Alis said they cannot afford the transportation west and have been trying to contact relatives to raise the money. In the meantime, Randa Ali on Friday contacted the Salvation Army looking for a place to stay but said she was turned down. A relief worker used her own money to pay for the Alis’ first night at the Astoria motel; Macy planned to pay for the second night.

With Randa Ali are her husband, who worked as an interior decorator in Anaheim, a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.

Macy said five of the 10 Americans or U.S. residents who were sheltered in the camp have reached their hometowns.

As for the Alis, he said: “I don’t know what’s going to happen here. I hope we come to a happy ending.”