In N.Va. Gang, A Brutal Sense Of Belonging

"I said, 'Hayner, what's on your arm?' He was trying to hide it," his mother said recently.

Hayner tried to shrug off the question. "Some crazy guys did this," he replied, according to his mother. He told her not to worry.

But Maria Isabel Flores did worry. Her son had been born amid a civil war in El Salvador. That chaos had driven her and her companion, Rigoberto Hernandez, to emigrate from there in the late 1980s. They left 2-year-old Hayner with his grandparents, in a village outside Chirilagua.

Northern Virginia would offer a fresh start, the couple figured, and they'd soon send for their son. But like so many other illegal immigrants, they found that it took years to get proper documentation.

The parents said that they stayed involved in their son's life. They called El Salvador frequently and mailed him presents -- T-shirts from Kmart, a green stuffed tiger, a Nintendo game. "Anything he asked for," said Flores, a cleaning woman. When he was nearly 15, Hayner asked to come to the United States. His legal papers still hadn't come through, so his father, a maintenance worker, and mother scraped together $6,000 to have him smuggled to Los Angeles.

In April 2001, Hayner Flores arrived at Dulles International Airport, to a joyous welcome by his parents, who hugged him and cried. He had grown into a tall handsome youth, with broad shoulders, dark hair and thick eyebrows -- just like in the photos he'd sent, to make sure his parents would recognize him.

Hayner was following a route trod by countless youths who come from Central America. A 2002 Harvard study found that 80 percent of children who immigrated to the United States from that region had been separated from their parents for a lengthy period.

Such children often fantasize about being with their mother and father. "There's this whole story about this mythical family that's sending money for you," said Carola Suarez-Orozco, a psychologist who co-authored the study.

But upon reuniting, such children might find that their parents are virtual strangers, often with additional children they've never met. Some of the young immigrants become resentful, angry or depressed.

Maria Isabel Flores worried that Hayner would feel that way. When he arrived in Virginia, she and his father sat him down and asked whether he'd felt unloved. His response reassured them: "How could I not love you? You're my parents."

But within days, the problems started.

Hayner fought with his three U.S.-born brothers. He started sleeping in the living room instead of sharing a bedroom lined with his little brother's grade-school photos. Hayner was polite to his parents, but he increasingly declined their invitations to go to church or relatives' homes, preferring to hang out with other kids.

Then the calls from Annandale High School started.

"They said he was rude, that he interrupted classes," his mother said. She was dumbfounded by the complaints about her quiet son. But the calls continued.

Hayner told his parents that the teachers were picking on him because he was Hispanic. His parents wondered whether he was right. Unable to speak English and with little education themselves -- Hernandez is illiterate -- they tuned in to America through the big TV in their living room, where Spanish-language programs mentioned such discrimination. And as a cleaning woman at a school, Maria Isabel had had plenty of teachers look right through her.

Don Clausen, the Annandale High principal at the time and a former Peace Corps volunteer in South America, said discrimination was never the issue. He recalled Flores as one of those immigrant kids who arrive at Annandale with little formal education and less parenting. "It's just no social skills," Clausen said. "He didn't know how to deal with other kids or adults, especially any authority figure."