The tickets were purchased. She and her two children were checked in for their flight to Honduras. Then Vicky Chavez, facing deportation Tuesday night, changed her mind.
Chavez and her daughters — ages 6 and 4 months — had the option to seek sanctuary in Utah for several months, but until hours before her flight, it wasn’t her choice, said Amy Dominguez, spokeswoman for the activist group Unidad Inmigrante (Immigrant Unity).
When Chavez was saying goodbye to friends and supporters, she realized she couldn’t go. She fled Honduras for asylum in the United States in 2014 because of domestic abuse, violence and economic and social upheaval in her native country, supporters said, and she wasn’t going to take her children back to face that kind of danger.