Vicky Chavez
You can’t cut it any closer than Vicky Chavez did in January 2018. After being ordered to leave the country by ICE officials, Chavez bought plane tickets for herself and her then 4-month-old and six-year-old daughters. She packed their few belongings, went to the airport and even checked in for the family’s deportation flight. But then she became overwhelmed by what would be waiting for her and her small children when the plane landed.
In 2014, Vicky and her then-3-year-old daughter fled their home town of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, a city widely regarded as one of the most dangerous and violent in the world. Vicky left her home country because she says she was experiencing sexual violence and domestic abuse. She said things were rapidly deteriorating and that both she and her daughter were told they were going to be killed. Vicky chose to flee to the U.S. because she hoped to apply for asylum — which she says she did immediately upon her arrival — and because her parents already lived here legally.
Despite doing all the things her attorney instructed, Vicky and her daughter’s asylum request was eventually turned down by the courts. She says she still doesn’t understand why but suspects that her legal advice may have been flawed. After her appeals also failed, Vicky, who had another daughter in 2017 (a U.S. citizen) was ordered to leave the country and return to Honduras even though she has no immediate family, no job prospects and no way to feed her children there. And as Vicky put it so bluntly, “I knew I might be killed if I went back and that meant my children could be killed as well.”
So, standing in the Salt Lake City airport waiting to board her plane to what she believed would be the death of her family, Vicky suddenly changed her mind. She asked one of the activists who had come to see her off if she would take her to a church where she and the girls could take sanctuary.
That was 18 months ago and Vicky, now 31, along with her nearly 8-year-old daughter and her nearly 2-year-old daughter, who has no real memories of life outside of sanctuary, are still spending every day of their lives inside the walls of Salt Lake City’s First Unitarian Church. They live in a converted classroom.
Vicky does her best to make the girl’s lives as normal as possible under conditions that are anything but. She tries to always keep a good attitude and a smile on her face when around the kids. She told me the only time she lets herself be sad is when they are both asleep.
Vicky has no idea how long she’ll be both imprisoned and protected within the church walls she now calls home. And while she hopes to have her case for asylum reopened at some point, she says no matter what happens, she knows she made the best decision for her children. “At least we are all together and safe, and that is more important than anything else.”