EL PASO, Texas (CNN) -- Marina Diaz knows each day could be her last when she leaves for school each morning. Marina Diaz and Alejandro Caballero cross a U.S.-Mexico border checkpoint on the way to school each day. But that doesn't stop her from making the trip from her home on the dusty outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a key battleground in Mexico's drug wars, to El Paso, Texas, where she attends high school. From the moment she catches a bus to downtown Juarez, she is mindful of her surroundings. This is a city that saw 1,600 homicides last year. She warily watches the federal soldiers patrolling the streets.
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70 percent of Lydia Patterson Institute's students commute from Mexico
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Students, parents say school provides sense of security in contrast to Juarez, Mexico
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Lydia Patterson Institute has admitted 25 new students from Mexico this year
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School founded as sanctuary for families fleeing Mexican Revolution
Some are American citizens with Mexican parents; others are Mexican citizens who carry a student visa to any one of three U.S.-Mexico border checkpoints in @placeholder that serve tens of thousands of students, white-collar workers and day laborers each day.
Since Mexican border towns became battlefields in the drug war, American towns like @placeholder have become refuges for middle- and upper-class Mexicans.
"We were nearly at the point of being another statistic in @placeholder, just a number."