Quality Control: a short story by Edwidge Danticat

On the plane, she dreamed two sniper rifles were being pointed at her head. The landing announcement jolted her awake. Joseph Salvador Airport was surrounded by barbed-wire-topped walls. Everything outside was dangerous. Or so the concrete, bunker-like immigration and customs building seemed to indicate. She might be better off taking the next plane back, she thought. But she'd already agreed to write a feel-good story on the island's first lady, an old college roommate.