Fermino Sánchez Hernández had not had any problems with the law since he arrived in the United States four years ago from Mexico, but that was not enough for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. A few days ago, he left his home in Freehold, New Jersey, to go to his job as a gardener.
He was walking down the sidewalk, it was almost 7 a.m.. “Suddenly, two people came out of nowhere, asked him his name, asked for identification, and when he told them he didn’t have any, they arrested him,” says Roxana, his relative.
The 28-year-old was taken to the Elizabeth Detention Center, where someone saw him sitting in a corner, barely speaking, and insisted he call a family member. Fermino, who has rudimentary Spanish as he is a Tzotzil speaker, a language native to his home state of Chiapas, picked up the phone and called Roxana to tell her he had been detained by ICE. In his next call, he told her he had been transferred to a detention center in Louisiana because the Elizabeth jail was overcrowded.
The last time Roxana heard Fermino’s voice, he sounded distressed and impatient. He even told her that he wanted to sign his own deportation order to Mexico. “He’s desperate, he says they don’t give them food, only a cup of soup or a cookie all day, he says he can’t stand it, that it’s ugly in there.”
For a few weeks now, these phone calls have become agony for Jessica Acosta Sánchez. She is always afraid of what she may hear on the other end of the line. Several nights ago, Jessica answered her partner’s call in a panic. In just over a minute, the tight and immense time afforded a detainee, she wanted to know how he was, what they were saying to him, and where he was calling from, especially where he was at that moment.
— It’s frustrating to imagine that the next call will be from Cuba.
But that call from Juan Manuel Fernández Ramos, 30, was from a detention center in Houston, where he arrived in the early morning, handcuffed, as part of a group of more than 100 detainees. He had been put on a plane in Florida and, only when he landed, was he told he was in Texas.
When he made his previous call, Juan Manuel was in the Krome Processing Center, a jail in Miami operated by ICE. He was taken there by authorities after appearing in court. He had been ticketed for speeding in February, when he was driving just three minutes away from his home in Tampa. He also had a DUI.
