“Mayra Machado had a well-paying job as an ophthalmologist’s assistant that allowed her to drive her three children in a BMW to back-to-back school activities in her suburban Arkansas town.
“Few knew that her own mother brought her as a 5-year-old illegally to the United States from El Salvador to escape civil war. Machado was raised in Santa Ana by her grandmother, moving in with her estranged mother in Fayetteville, Arkansas, after graduating from high school.”