June 14, 2016 - After fleeing El Salvador in 2014, Wendy Palacios, 22, is staying with relatives in East Memphis. Now she is facing deportation despite a deal she said she made with immigration officials to get help in acquiring a visa in exchange for testimony against a smuggler. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE June 14, 2016 — Wendy Palacios, 22, holds her 11-month-old daughter Angela in their Memphis home Tuesday. Palacios fled from El Salvador in 2014 after she got pregnant. She wanted to start a new life with more opportunities for Angela. Palacios, who lives in Memphis, is facing deportation. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) June 14, 2016 - Wendy Palacios, 22, poses for a portrait at her Memphis home Tuesday. Palacios fled from El Salvador in 2014 after she got pregnant. She wanted to start a new life with more opportunities for her daughter, Angela. Palacios, who currently lives in Memphis with her daughter, is facing deportation. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) Related Coverage Migrant women take risks for 'a better life'

By Maria Ines Zamudio of The Commercial Appeal

Wendy Sarai Palacios thought she'd struck a deal with someone she could trust — the U.S. government.

She'd fearfully testify against the predatory smuggler who brought her into the country illegally in 2014 then attempted to rape her. She'd provide all those details, under oath, that she'd hoped never to tell anyone. In exchange, she'd get a pathway to citizenship — a so-called U-visa for crime victims who cooperate in criminal investigations — and a new life in America with a newborn daughter.

But Palacios, living with family in East Memphis since 2015, says federal officials reneged on their promise and she faces a deportation hearing June 22.

"I want the person who promised to help me to open his heart and think about his children. I know he wants the best for his children the same way I want the best for my daughter. I helped them to get that man," the 22-year-old single mother said. "I wouldn't want to end up with a deportation order when I helped the government catch (prosecute) a criminal."

Daniel Hetlage, spokesman for U.S. Border Patrol, declined to answer questions about Palacios' case.

The Commercial Appeal could not independently confirm any government promise made Palacios — she has nothing in writing from the immigration officer who investigated the case — but immigration experts say such deals are not unusual along the border.

"I have seen other cases where DHS (Department of Homeland Security, which runs border patrol) has benefited significantly from immigrants' help in investigating cases," said Eunice Cho, staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "But they (DHS) have turned their backs on these witnesses."

Palacios' trek to Memphis unfolded along a notorious, well-worn path to freedom from El Salvador through Guatemala then across Mexico where women and children have been kidnapped, raped and murdered. The same year she fled to the U.S. along that route, The Commercial Appeal documented those horrors in its "Trail of Fears" project that focused on other Central American women who risked their lives to reach the U.S. and, ultimately, Memphis.

Along the long trail from the southern Mexican border to its northern border with the U.S., women often become a commodity. Those who can't afford to pay a smuggler or pay bribes to authorities or pay a "tax" to cartels often end up paying with their bodies or their lives, the newspaper reported.

Palacios made the decision to flee, she said, after learning she was pregnant. Her homeland was too dangerous for an unwed mother raising a child alone, she said. Just in 2014, more than 3,912 people, including dozens of police officers and soldiers, were killed in the nation that's roughly the size of Massachusetts but with one of the highest murder rates in the world.

A cousin in Memphis agreed to pay $7,000 to smuggle Palacios into the country. Her journey to the Texas border took 22 days — aboard a series of buses and cars and then miles on foot — dodging immigration officials from Mexico and the U.S.

Palacios said she was four months pregnant at the time of that journey but overcame the physical demands, and the fear, for her baby. But that hopefulness was fleeting, Palacios said, when she was nearly raped at a safe house 18 miles over the border in Texas, then arrested in a raid by federal agents.

She said she was housed in what other immigrants called "la hielera" or the ice house, sleeping on the floor under Mylar blankets.

It was there she decided to help immigration officials to prosecute a smuggler who almost raped her.

Palacios was afraid to face the alleged smuggler, Jose Manuel Flores-Patiño, in court but she did it hoping it would be her ticket to staying in the country legally. He pleaded guilty to two charges including, bringing and harboring illegal immigrants. He is serving a six-year sentence in federal prison.

Following her testimony, the young woman was released from custody and moved to Memphis to be near family. But the promised help to get the visa never came.

U.S. Border Patrol and other agencies involved with the case have not signed the required certification form for Palacio's U-visa application. Without it, her application will be rejected.

The form certifies the immigrant was a victim of a crime and cooperated with the investigation. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a federal agency, approves or denies the application.

"A lot of discretion is given to (law enforcement) agencies to determine if the immigrant is helpful or will be helpful," said Professor Leticia Saucedo, who focuses on immigration law at the University of California, Davis.

Saucedo said that flexibility has created problems because some law enforcement agencies, like those in Maricopa County, Arizona, refuse to sign the forms for political reasons.

"In some areas, there is a political ideology. There is an attitude of not wanting to give someone a visa," said Saucedo. "What's missing in the statute is an alternative for agencies refusing to give certification for cooperating."

Palacios' attorney, Kerry Avens Krauch, said it's been frustrating trying to get the signature. Krauch said she can't understand why border patrol or another agency refuses to certify her client helped when there are federal court documents that prove she testified.

"We keep running into barriers and roadblocks. People who either say no or don't reply," she said. "We have reached out to Rep. Steve Cohen's office and we are hopeful that he will assist us."

Rep. Cohen's office declined to comment.

Last year, about 30,106 U-visa applications were filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; a third were granted because of an annual 10,000 cap.

Congress approved the U-visa program in 2000 in an effort to strengthen the relationship between law enforcement agencies and immigrant communities.

Palacios faces the strong prospect of deportation and raising her child in violence-ravaged El Salvador.

"The love for my daughter keeps me going."