Woman Freed After 22 Years in Prison

After 22 years in prison, Maria Suarez did exactly what she said she would do if ever released: hug her family and thank God.

“Mamita, Mamita, Mamita linda!” Suarez cried Tuesday in the arms of her 86-year-old mother, Trinidad Suarez.

Maria Suarez was 16 when she and her family immigrated legally to the U.S. from Michoacan, Mexico, in 1976. Two weeks later, Suarez was approached on the street by a woman offering her housework, but who instead sold Suarez to 68-year-old Anselmo Covarrubias as a sex slave for $200.

She was sexually abused for five years in Covarrubias’ home in Azusa until his neighbors, a young couple who feared the man known as a witch doctor, clubbed him to death.

Suarez, who washed and hid the weapon, was convicted of conspiring in the murder.

Last year, the California Board of Prison Terms granted her release, citing battered woman’s syndrome.

She was paroled to a federal detention center on Terminal Island to await word on whether she would be deported.

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security granted the 44-year-old Suarez permission to remain in the United States permanently.

“OK, I want to hug everybody,” Suarez tearfully announced to the 30 friends and relatives who had waited almost four hours outside the detention center with slowly wilting, long-stemmed red roses. They included Rep. Hilda L. Solis (D-El Monte) and Consul General of Mexico Ruben Beltran, both of whom helped win her release.

“It’s over,” Suarez cried. “It’s over.”

Twenty minutes into the reunion, she collapsed, overcome.

“I can’t believe this,” she said. “I can’t believe it.... I just want to sit down.”

Suarez made it to her feet and was whisked away in a friend’s sport utility vehicle. A new bed awaited her at her mother’s home in Duarte.

Niece Patricia Valencia, who spearheaded the fight for Suarez’s release, said the “government has finally given her what she deserves: justice. It’s overwhelming that she can be with her family, walk in the sunlight, feel the air in her hair.”

But Valencia warned that “there are other Marias out there.”

Suarez’s release should encourage other immigrant victims of abuse and trafficking to speak out, said her lawyer, Jessica Dominguez.

“All the Marias that we find in our community -- the doors are open,” Dominguez said. “You are not alone. Please find help.”