Every night since early March, Jaime has slept on a bunk bed in a dormitory with four dozen other men at the La Salle County Regional Detention Center.
Border Patrol agents arrested Jaime on March 4 after he crossed into the U.S. illegally, but he hasn’t been charged with a crime and he isn’t awaiting a date in immigration court. He’s being held by the U.S. Marshals Service because he’s a witness for federal prosecutors pursuing a case against a U.S. citizen accused of trying to smuggle him. He spoke with me by phone from the detention center in Encinal, north of Laredo, on the condition I not use his last name.
The 32-year-old from Mexico spends most of his day in a dorm watching TV, playing cards, and eating at one of the two long tables on either end of the room. The novel coronavirus was just making headlines when Jaime paid a smuggler $2,000 to take him to Fort Worth from the Mexican border city of Miguel Alemán; now it dominates the news he watches.
