Student pays visit to detainees

Hundreds of miles from their hometowns, a handful of former El Vaquero employees found a friend in Jessica Reavey.

Following the arrest of 10 individuals at the Mexican restaurant March 28, the sophomore Hablantes Unidos member picked up the phone and started the process of finding her friends, whom she eventually tracked to the Montgomery County Jail in Montgomery City, Mo.

"There was a lot of calling around and stuff," she said. "The officers that answered the phone had a hard time actually giving out information on them just because of the way their last names work."

In order to finally track down her friends, Reavey said she also had to put in calls to immigration agents, and once she did confirm their location, the process of visiting them was very unorganized and stressful. She said it took about an hour to get in to see the detainees and that other visitors there had been waiting for an hour before she and her friend arrived.

Reavey also said one of the screening bays at the jail was broken, so the usual amount of visitors could not go in all at once.

"When I was sitting in there talking, one of the other people who was talking to somebody else - there was two people in another booth ... one person who wasn't talking to them just kept giving me dirty looks because I was speaking in Spanish, I was talking to a Spanish person, and so it was really uncomfortable," she said.

Reavey said her friendship with the El Vaquero employees came as a result of having taught many of them English through Hablantes Unidos. Her visit to the jail, however, was an endeavor she decided to pursue separate from the campus organization.

"I went just to pretty much say bye, see how they were all doing, and let one of them know that his brother had already went home," she said. "After it all happened, his brother decided to go home too, just so he wouldn't worry about his little brother."

Although Reavey said she was mainly interested in letting the detainees know that people in the community were thinking about them, she also was joining a friend of hers who had a more specific purpose. Reavey said that her friend - who does not attend Truman and whose name she declined to give - worked with some of the El Vaquero employees, and many asked him to get their possessions together either to sell or ship home.

"[The detainees were] telling him addresses and phone numbers he needed to memorize because we couldn't really take anything in there," she said.

Reavey said she talked to three individuals during her visit, all of whom are generally very happy people.

"The first one I saw, he really didn't want to talk or anything," she said. "He just kind of sat there and was like, you know, 'I'm so glad you came.'"

Another of Reavey's acquaintances uttered a line in Spanish that stuck in her mind: You really know your friends when they visit you in jail.

Reavey said the third man she spoke with was attempting to maintain a cheerful façade by telling jokes and even said he wanted to invite her to his brother's wedding.

"He was trying to be funny, and for the most part he was, but you could still tell that it was affecting him too," she said.

Reavey said she thinks the detainees are destined to go back to Juarez, Mexico, a border town, and that she thought they were going to be sent back during the weekend. She said some live in other towns near the U.S.-Mexico border, but others are from areas like Vera Cruz and Michoacan, which are farther south in Mexico.

"So that means once they get into Mexico, they still have to make it halfway across Mexico," she said.

Reavey said that from this point, there is not much else she can do to help the detainees because the friend she visited with was in better contact with them and knows what to do now. She said if he needs help, he will ask other people who know them.

Reavey said she thinks it was unlucky for some of the El Vaquero employees who were arrested as a result of the raid March 28, especially because some of the employees arrested are normally late to work and might have avoided the situation if they had not been on time that day. She said another just stumbled into the situation.

"One person actually doesn't even work [at El Vaquero]," Reavey said. "He just went with his brother."

The Montgomery County jail referred the Index to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in St. Louis, which did not release specific information about the detainees' current status.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who declined to give his name said the individuals arrested would have had a few different options upon arriving at the jail.

"They are made aware of their rights, and they have the option of asking a judge to return to their country as quick as possible, or they have the option of going to see a judge and pleading their case and trying to stay," the official said.