The Mail Order Bride Who Escaped

Ana Bolanos felt trapped in a violent, loveless marriage. Her husband threatened to turn her into to immigration officials if she sought a divorce.

A newspaper ad led her to a New Haven-based legal aid lawyer. And her life changed.

The lawyer, Sheila Hayre, specializes in domestic violence cases. Lately, that has come to mean specializing as well in immigration cases.

Bolanos (pictured), who now lives in Derby, came to the U.S. from Guatemala without documents in 1988. She raised two children while their father, whom she married in 1998, carried on relationships with other women, she said. He had also immigrated from Guatemala, but in 2006 was able to get legal working papers.

The couple went first to California, then moved to Connecticut in 1999 to be near some of her husband’s relatives. “I found a job in the same laundromat where I still work” in Ansonia, Bolanos said. His relatives urged her to stay with her husband despite his extended trip to Guatemala to be with another lover and despite his cashing in his hefty 401K and not spending a dime of it on his family, she charged.

“Estupida,” she repeated passionately in Spanish throughout an interview. She called herself stupid for not leaving her husband, but she was stopped in her tracks by fear of being deported if he turned her in.

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