Washington Post by Eli Saslow
A Virginia teenager who was scheduled to be deported a few days after her high school graduation earned a last-minute reprieve Monday afternoon. Heydi Mejia, 18, and her mother, Dora Aldana, 40, were granted a one-year deferral by the Department of Homeland Security.
Mejia and Aldana, the subjects of a story in The Washington Post on Monday, were prepared to leave for Guatemala this week. Mejia was 4 when her mother brought her to the United States across the Rio Grande, and she graduated with honors from Meadowbrook High School in Richmond on Friday. She had planned to go to college, until immigration officials came to her family’s two-bedroom apartment in December, turning her senior year into a countdown to deportation.
The one-year reprieve allows her a chance to enroll in college and get a part-time job in cosmetology, as she had planned. Her attorney, Ricky Malik, has filed a motion with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to reopen her case, which could lead to a dismissal of the deportation order or a longer deferral.
“It has been an overwhelming week, for sure,” Mejia said Monday. “I’ve had every emotion, and now I just feel so relieved and so lucky.
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