Time is Running Out for Haitian Women and Girls in U.S. as Refugees

"“I’m a fighter,” Mona Pompilus says, sitting at her dining table in her comfortable two-bedroom apartment, 3 miles from Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. Fresh faced with her hair tied back, she wears a black tank top that bares her long arms. “I fight silently, take you by surprise.”

The 43-year-old single mother never saw herself leaving Haiti, but says, “Struggle is my name.”

She spent seven years building her dream house in Haiti before the 2010 earthquake shook it apart. For two months, she cooked, showered, and slept in her backyard alongside 25 people, many of whom she barely knew.

“I had my job, but I didn’t have my house.” Her employer supplied gasoline for her to get to and from work, but the roads were almost unusable, she says. Living amid the rubble were displaced people, many severely injured but with nowhere to turn for help. The constant aftershocks kept everyone on guard, Pompilus says. “You had to keep your kids inside.” But there was a risk being trapped inside of what remained of her house if she made the wrong move..."

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