CORINA BARRANCO STARTS EACHAMERican day the same way she started her American life: by putting one foot in front of the other. Thirteen years ago, when she was 5, she walked across the Mexico-U.S. border into Arizona. On this Thursday in February, Barranco leaves her home in Lorain, Ohio, at 6:50 a.m. to walk through swirling snow, under purple predawn skies, past empty houses where she suspects drugs are sold. Her family does not have a car, so Barranco’s feet take her across this fading industrial city, from school to work to church, between a tangle of highways, on streets that lack sidewalks. Even when there is a hole in her boot, she is rarely late.
By 7:23, the high school senior is sitting in the front row of…