A Life-Or-Death Struggle for Asylum in America

"While other kids enjoyed summer break, a teenager with more on her mind slipped into her only dressy jacket and traveled south to Anaheim, to a nondescript building housing the local office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.  Lithe and athletic, the girl knew she’d be less than a mile from Disneyland, “the happiest place on Earth.”  But for Maria, a pseudonym, fun was a luxury she couldn’t afford that day in June.  At the tender age of 15, she faced an interview to plead, essentially, for her life — to ask for refuge from violence so chilling her family thought it better to smuggle her to the United States in the spring of 2013." - Susan Ferriss and Amy Isackson, Oct. 8, 2014.