Sold into slavery as a girl, Shyima Hall becomes a U.S. citizen [View all]

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1216-shyima-hall-20111216,0,1583100.story

When she was 10, Shyima Hall was smuggled from Egypt into the U.S. as a slave to a family in Irvine. In Montebello on Thursday, she became an American citizen.

By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times

December 16, 2011
A decade ago, Shyima Hall was smuggled into the United States as a 10-year-old slave, forced to cook and clean inside the home of a wealthy Irvine family and, at night, sleep on a squalid mattress in a windowless garage.

On Thursday, the Egyptian-born 22-year-old stood before a federal judge in Montebello with nearly 900 others and was sworn in as naturalized U.S. citizen. The ceremony capped a hard-scrabble journey that began with Hall's rescue, wound through the foster care system and ended with her living on her own, working, and with ambitions to become a federal agent.

"I went through something terrible, but right now I'm in a great place," Hall said after Thursday's citizenship ceremony at the Quiet Cannon Country Club. "I can't imagine anything greater than having my own life."

Hall's Egyptian parents sold her into slavery when she was 8 for $30 a month, according to authorities. The Cairo couple who bought her moved to Irvine two years later, smuggling Hall into the U.S. where she toiled for them and their five children until she was 13.