Finding Refuge
I accompanied 15-year-old Maryori Urbina-Contreras and her family from their home in Waukegan to an immigration hearing at Chicago Immigration Court in October. Fleeing violence in her home country of Honduras, Maryori travelled alone for several weeks in 2014 before reuniting with her mother, who has been in the United States since 2001. She herself was robbed at gunpoint on the way to school when she was 12. She was only one of 68,000 unaccompanied children who flooded across the southwest border of the United States, causing a humanitarian crisis in 2014, and many ended up in Chicago.
Her ongoing immigration case will eventually determine if she is allowed to stay in the U.S. or be forced to return to Honduras. At the hearing in October, her case was postponed until 2018. For now, she can remain in the United States and continue her schooling and life with her mother, stepfather and two younger siblings.
Here is a link to the in-depth story written by Colleen Mastony in the Chicago Tribune:
Honduran teen, who entered U.S. as unaccompanied child, awaits word on fate