FIRST OF THREE PARTS

On the morning of her daughter's eighth birthday party, Cleo Harris came home from working the night shift and started frying doughnuts. The familiar feel of the dough, the cozy kitchen of her Brooklyn Park townhouse, the thick smells of hot oil and melting sugar -- all helped push aside the looming question: Was this the last birthday party she would ever throw for her little girl? Harris was pregnant with Yatta in 1998 when she fled Liberia in the chaos and murder of a bloody civil war. She had to leave her firstborn child behind -- lanky, shy Quantah Cooper. It was a wrenching decision, but the 15-year-old girl had no visa. She stayed behind with grandparents. Now 45, Harris has missed Quantah every day of the nine years they've been apart. And now she is confronted with that pain all over again. Later this year, Harris might be forced to return to Liberia. And this time, she might be compelled to leave little Yatta behind. "Yatta has a right to a better life ... a right to stay here," Harris said. "But who would she stay with?" Harris and thousands of other Liberians who are not U.S. citizens have been allowed to stay temporarily in the United States for years while civil war raged in their West African nation. While here, they found jobs, bought homes, started families. Yatta was born here and so is a U.S. citizen. But now, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Liberia has stabilized, and Harris and others who are here temporarily must leave by Oct. 1.

This forced departure represents the latest dramatic chapter in the intertwined history of the United States and Liberians. Many of their ancestors first came here shackled in the holds of slave ships. A generation or two later, thousands of freed slaves were sent back to Africa to get rid of them. A country was founded for them.

But indigenous tribes did not welcome the newly arrived "Americo-Liberians." Over time, this tension erupted into the violence that eventually drove Harris and throngs of others back across the Atlantic to America, seeking sanctuary.

And now they may be sent back once again.

The sudden departure of thousands would be a dramatic change to their communities. Officials are just beginning to assess what would happen if hundreds of houses are dumped on the market, if dozens of nursing homes lose skilled workers, if scores of children are pulled from school or left behind.

Cleo Harris' story is just one of many. And to her, the prospect of leaving is nearly unbearable.

She packed up the doughnuts to take to the birthday party. It would break her heart to say goodbye to another daughter. But it would also break her heart to take happy Yatta to a country so destroyed by war.

A looted, violent city

In the lawless capital city of Monrovia, armed thugs had routinely robbed Cleo Harris' house. Once, they yanked her from her bed, tore off her nightgown and beat her with their rifles. Her route to the airport on the day she fled snaked through a cemetery of a city where her brother's bullet-riddled body had rotted in a riverbed, one of more than 200,000 war deaths.

The city had been so looted after two decades of anarchy that every doorway she saw was doorless. Former workers sold stolen goods on the streets. Cassava and other produce were harvested half ripe because of the urgency of the hunger.

What finally sent Harris to America, though, was her pregnancy with Yatta.

For the sake of her first child, Harris had stayed for years while hundreds of thousands of other Liberians fled. With Quantah nearly grown and another daughter on the way, it was time to leave.

"I had to do it," Harris said. "I just kept telling myself, 'You can't bring another child into this hopeless country.' "

African and American

Yatta's eighth birthday party, held at a cousin's house, was rowdy and joyous. Kids raced up and down the basement stairs to grab doughnuts while Harris and the other mothers stirred bubbling pots on the stove. The kitchen steamed with the spicy smells of Liberian stew.

In her second-grade class at Fair Oaks Elementary School, Yatta excels in spelling. At home, she is all energy -- flying braids slapping her shoulders when she and her best friend, TeTee Hill, jump rope. She loves the Disney Channel, PlayStation, Frosted Mini-Wheats straight from the box and teasing her mother.

"I know you like me, Mommy," she taunts when Harris is glued to her favorite TV show. "But you love Oprah."