The Alienation of Jaime Cachua
His friends and family members in Rome, Ga., voted to support mass deportation. Now he’s scrambling to stay in the country.His wife was spiraling into insomnia, and his children were afraid to go to school, so Jaime Cachua sought out the person he trusted most in a crisis. He sat at his kitchen table in rural Georgia across from his father-in-law, Sky Atkins, the family patriarch. Jaime, 33, hadn’t seen his own father since he was 10 months old, when he left Mexico in a car seat bound for the United States. It was Sky, 45, who had stood by Jaime at his wedding, helped him move into his first house and stayed at the hospital overnight when one of Jaime’s children was sick with pneumonia.
“We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” Jaime told him. “There’s a chance we could lose everything.”
“Isn’t that a bit dramatic?” Sky asked. “How? Help me understand.”
Jaime muted the football game on TV and began to explain his new reality as an undocumented immigrant after the election of Donald Trump, who had won the presidency in part by promising to deport more than 11 million people living in the country illegally. Trump’s aides were discussing plans to build detention camps and enlist the military to carry out mass deportations beginning on Day 1. Their local Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, was saying she couldn’t “wait to see it happen.” Jaime’s best chance to become a legal U.S. resident was a new program for immigrants like himself, people who were married to U.S. citizens and had lived in the country for at least 10 years without committing any crimes. But, just a few days earlier, that program had been struck down by a Trump-appointed federal judge.
“There’s nothing to stop them from rounding me up once he takes office,” Jaime said.
Sky had spent much of his adulthood preparing to protect his family in a crisis. He’d learned survival tactics in the Army and had trained in hand-to-hand combat as a Georgia corrections officer. In the last few years, as he sensed the country becoming more polarized and volatile, he’d built up a small collection of firearms and a cache of emergency supplies. He’d been anticipating a moment when the government might rise up against his family, but this particular crisis was one he’d helped to create.
“I’m going to be straight with you,” he told Jaime. “I voted for Trump. I believe in a lot of what he says.”
The Alienation of Jaime Cachua
His friends and family members in Rome, Ga., voted to support mass deportation. Now he’s scrambling to stay in the country.
Dam i was hyped as fuck for this. Yes it unfortunately looks like its only going to be mobile.
