Photo by Steven St. JohnTribune

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Lupita Hernandez and her children enter the El Paisano grocery store in Santa Fe. She had come to wire money home to her family.

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I first met Lupita Hernandez and her children almost a year ago at El Paisano grocery store in Santa Fe (above). She had come with Ivanna and Ian to wire money home to her family, a few hundred dollars that goes much further in Mexico.

Over the past 11 months, I have spent many days documenting their lives in big moments and small, in joyous celebration and in tearful agony that was painful for me to photograph.

Hernandez was crushed when her application for residency in the United States was denied in February. I was the only one with her as she stood on the street outside her lawyer's office, sobbing. It was especially difficult for me to remain in my role as documentarian that day.

In stark contrast, I remember the pride I saw in Hernandez the first time I came to the trailer home that she and her boyfriend bought for the family.

I wanted to tell this story because it gives people a different look at the life of an immigrant from Mexico.

Hernandez came here legally and has played by the rules. But because she was too afraid to speak against the man she once loved when he beat her, a law designed to protect women like her has failed her. She's now on the wrong side of immigration law, like so many others who came here undocumented.

In the end, Hernandez wants what we all want - the opportunity for our families to be safe and together, to live in peace and be healthy.