North Miami High School senior Daniela Palaez has a 6.7 GPA, the valedictory nod from her classmates, a brother in the U.S. Army and deportation papers to Colombia.
In a hearing on Monday a federal immigration judge ordered the 18-year-old Palaez, in the U.S. since she was 4 years old, to voluntarily leave the the country for her native Colombia by the end of the month after her request for a green card was denied.
"Everything I've worked for, it's, like going down the drain in a matter of days," says the aspiring surgeon who has already applied to a number of Ivy League colleges. "I consider myself an American. [Deportation] would mean I'd leave a country and go back to a country that I don't remember, a country [where] I don't feel at home, and I don't even graduate high school,"
TVNL Comment: America the beautiful. Disgraceful.