2008 Woodie Awards
Student pays visit to detainees
Julie Williams
Issue date: 4/17/08 Section: News
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.
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.
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