Since March, about 100 people have been transferred from Teton County’s jail to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That’s a pace the Teton County Sheriff Matt Carr has described as “steady,” since changing a policy to extend the time detainees are held for ICE pickup.
One Jackson resident’s husband, a home builder, was detained in July while out of town. He has legal work authorization, a clean record and is working on a pathway to citizenship.
He’s been here for three decades with his wife, who agreed to speak with Jackson Hole Community Radio’s Jenna McMurtry and Emily Cohen on the condition of anonymity. Her story starts with what it was like when she found out he wasn’t coming home.
Editor’s Note: This story has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
I was crying. I was shaking. My hands were sweating up, because I never drove over there in the big city, and it's like, I don't know what to do. I was frozen.
We’d never been apart before. Never ever, even though he went back for his visas. He’s had five visas, and he was going back and forth from Mexico to here, but it was only a couple weeks, and he came back. But this is the longest time that we've been separated.
I wish I had someone to tell me what to do in that moment. Even though, as a family, we talked about this when Trump started with a new administration. We talked, me and my family, my kids and my husband and I: We need to have a plan B, a plan B and a plan C if anything happens.
But we didn't talk [about] it deeply until we had this situation. I wish I had someone at that moment that I can talk to or they can help me to decide, ‘Okay, this is the next step.’ Because I don't know anything. I don't know what to do. I was frozen. What is the next step? What do we need to do?
The only thing that we knew is that Karina [an advocate who has helped the couple] recommended to get a lawyer. That's it. From then, I was like, ‘Okay, and what, [am] I gonna go and talk to the lawyer?’ What did I have to say to the lawyer? What did I need to say? I didn't know anything about nothing. Zero.
He was calling us every day. You have to pay for everything there. For FaceTiming, it was almost $7. For phone calls, it was like, what, 35 cents, 40 cents for a call. We had to make an account so he can be able to call us, so that way we can put money onto his account.
Now I can tell somebody, ‘Well, this is the next step if somebody comes and grabs your husband, or he goes and has an interview with immigration, this is what you need to do. This is the steps that you need to take.’
I don't know what's gonna happen, because right now he's gonna have another court [date], I think a couple more.
We don't know if they're going to give back his permit and his driver's license. We don't know anything right now. And this country has given us a lot. A lot. We’re very thankful of this country. And we never seen anything bad.
I know we’re going through tough stuff right now because of the president or whatever. But we [were] always very thankful, and we always said we want to keep living our lives here in the U.S. because, right now, we don't want to go back to Mexico. I mean, our whole life is here. My husband got here when he was 17. I got here when I was 15.
So our whole life is here. We’re very grateful for this country because it's given us a lot. A lot.
