As Laura Peniche described the harrowing journey through the desert she and her family crossed in 1997 — leaving Mexico to enter the United States when she was 13 — the tiny, sweet voices of her children playing behind her punctuated the memory.
Peniche, a 34-year-old Westminster resident, can’t imagine going a day without her three children, ages 4, 6 and 11. But the only way she can adjust her undocumented status to be recognized as a legal citizen is to leave this country and go through the process in Mexico. And that process, she fears, could take years. She worries she might never be allowed back in the U.S., leaving her separated from her children and the life she’s built in Colorado.
