A story of a Mexican child named Carlos, separated from his grandmother, and brought across the US border by a determined mother. Carlos is raised in the mean Chicago streets of the late 80s and early 90s, where he joins a gang and ends up in prison after killing a rival. In an underground super-max prison, Carlos finds the path of redemption as he obtains his college education and becomes a model inmate, but then is brutally attacked by his own gang...