Gisell Torres is a recent Rutgers grad with a finance degree, a stack of academic awards, and countless kudos for community service. She married her college sweetheart. He wants to be a doctor, she a lawyer.
Torres would seem to be writing her own American success story, except she was born in Peru and a happy ending rests in the hands of U.S bureaucrats she has never met.
Barring government intervention, the 22-year-old with a long face and tired eyes must report to immigration officials Tuesday with a one-way ticket to a country she has never seen, a place her father fled when terrorists threatened his life.
The Torres family arrived legally in the United States in 1990 when Gisell was 3. In 1999, the family was denied asylum and ordered to return to Peru in 2002.
But Gisell's parents didn't leave. And they didn't tell their children about that fateful decision to stay.
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