Orphaned In Mexico, Trapped In ICE Limbo
"The little girl is captured in a photo taken after her mother's murder, dressed in a frilly pink dress and clutching a grape lollipop, her face nestled in her grandmother's chest.
The grandmother, Marisela Escobedo, looks determined in the snapshot, taken at one of many protests she staged to demand justice for her 16-year-old daughter, Rubi Frayre, whose presumed killer walked free despite confessing to her murder.
It was at one of those protests that a gunman hunted down Escobedo, 52, and shot and killed her just steps from the state capitol building in Chihuahua City on Dec. 16. And in that moment, 3-year-old Heidi Barraza Frayre, the toddler photographed in the pink dress, became — for the second time in her short life — both a victim and a symbol of the deadly violence consuming Mexico.
The little girl now sits in a Houston shelter for immigrant children, separated from her remaining family, surely unable to understand much about the asylum request that has been filed on her behalf."
SUSAN CARROLL and DUDLEY ALTHAUS in the Houston Chronicle, Feb. 2, 2011.