Trauma and Transformation: Bruna Oliveira’s Journey
On Valentine’s Day in 2018, tragedy struck as Bruna Oliveira’s geography teacher was shot before her very eyes. As he heroically ushered students into his classroom to protect them from an approaching gunman, he became a victim, collapsing at her feet. Crouched beside his lifeless body, Bruna held her breath and feared she would meet the same fate — a mere 14 years old, staring down the barrel of death. Fortunately, the shooter moved on, continuing his rampage elsewhere.
At the time of the horrific massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Bruna’s Brazilian family was residing temporarily in the United States. They had no plans of making it a permanent home. Her mother, an architect, was participating in an English immersion program, and she had brought her two children along on her student visa. However, the worst high school shooting in American history transformed Bruna’s identity — it made her an American, or at least a would-be American. This was a baptism by bullet, not only for her but also for many other immigrant and international students at her school.
Many of these students had fled their home countries to escape violence, only to find themselves facing a new kind of peril. The massacre turned their lives upside down, and while their worried relatives urged them to return to their native countries for safety, the teens, bound together by their shared trauma, refused to leave. “It was a massive event that took a real toll on us, but it also, like, truly bonded us forever — to each other and to this country,” Bruna reflected, now a pre-med college senior. She aspires to become an emergency medicine doctor, inspired by her own experiences during that fateful day.
In the aftermath, Bruna and 74 other survivors learned about a special visa program offered by the government, designed for victims of serious crimes who assist law enforcement: the U visa. Little did they know that this well-intentioned program is one of the most dysfunctional within the already troubled immigration system. The delays in processing U visas are notorious, often far exceeding the long waits associated with the already backlogged asylum program.
