She was adopted into an abusive US home. Decades later, immigration policies sent her back to Brazil

It sounded like freedom, like a world of possibility beyond the orphanage walls.

Maria Pires was getting adopted. At 11, she saw herself escaping the violence of the Sao Paulo orphanage, leaving Brazil for America.

A single man in his 40s, Floyd Sykes III, came to meet her. He signed paperwork and brought Maria home.

She arrived in suburban Baltimore in 1989. She was, she believed, officially an American.

But what happened there would come to haunt her.

“My father — my adopted father — he was supposed to save me,” Pires said. Instead, he tortured and sexually abused her.

After nearly three years, Sykes was arrested. Pires entered foster care.

By then, she was consumed with fury. In the worst years, she beat a teenager at a roller rink, leaving him in a coma. She attacked a prison gu