His friends and family members voted to support mass deportation. Now he's scrambling to stay in the country. .

[Demovictory9]

Last edited Sun Dec 15, 2024, 05:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Link without paywall

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/us/trump-immigrant-deportations-rome-georgia.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hk4.Y5-D.XRY13s7y4rts&smid=url-share


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.


“I’m going to be straight with you,” he told Jaime. “I voted for Trump. I believe in a lot of what he says.”

“I figured as much,” Jaime said. “You and just about everyone else around here.”

“It’s about protecting our rights as a sovereign country,” Sky said. “We need to shut down the infiltration on the border. It’s not about you.”

_________^


But lately the trucks at his dealership were festooned with Trump flags, his church group was discussing the “sanctity of borders,” and his neighborhood was lined with political signs, including one that read: “Start shipping off illegals NOW!” More than 70 percent of voters in surrounding Floyd County had chosen Trump and his mass deportations, including many of Jaime’s friends and family members.

[keithbvadu2]

1. It turns out that his wife voted to deport him?

[Noel Kums]

2. Sounds like his father-in-law did.

[arthritisR_US]

42. There is no where in the article that she did.

[arthritisR_US]

54. Please give proof of that because I haven't seen any such thing.

[harumph]

3. "Sky" is one dumb motherfucker.

[Demovictory9]

20. Its interesting that Sky's father and wife are anti Trump

Sky pulled into Jaime’s cul-de-sac and carried his go bag into the house. Nowhere could he sense the country’s political tensions escalating like inside his own family. He shared a house with his father, but they hadn’t spoken for 13 months, ever since his father accused Sky of being a “radical foot soldier” for Trump. His sister-in-law was transgender, but Sky refused to use new pronouns or change the way he talked, because, he said, he “didn’t believe in that PC crap.” His wife, a Democrat, had briefly considered moving out a few days after the election, accusing Sky of betraying their Hispanic grandchildren with his vote.

[arthritisR_US]

43. Sky's wife was an anti dumpster as well.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

4. Actually, it WAS about him.

Sorry the family patriarch is an asshole.

[AltairIV]

5. Simple.

Deport him, then he can stop worrying about it.

[SunSeeker]

26. Um what? If he is deported to a country he's never known, his worries are just beginning.

What a callous and wrong-headed thing to say.

Undocumented mmigrants keep our farms and restaurants going. Deport them all and our economy crashes. Simple.

[arthritisR_US]

41. Boy am I with you!

[hatrack]

6. "It's not about you" . . . .uh . . . . OK.

Whatever, Sky. It's just your son-in-law, it's just the father of your grandchildren.

Oh, and Sky? Fuck you.

[BannonsLiver]

7. Am I the only one who'd like to hover over Sky loudly berating him for being a shit for brains?

[Demovictory9]

21. His own father thinks so too

Sky pulled into Jaime’s cul-de-sac and carried his go bag into the house. Nowhere could he sense the country’s political tensions escalating like inside his own family. He shared a house with his father, but they hadn’t spoken for 13 months, ever since his father accused Sky of being a “radical foot soldier” for Trump.

[orleans]

52. jamie should pack up the wife and kids and get the fuck out of georgia

come to a blue state.

how would sky like that? his daughter and grandkids in hiding far away from his trumpy bullshit

[Buns_of_Fire]

59. Apparently, his "go bag" is like Linus' security blanket.

You never know when Q (or Margie the Kook) will issue the call to mobilize and march down the street, eating Cheetos all the way.

Sky sounds like an A#1 asshole.

[Botany]

8. ATTN Sky Atkins do you know how many illegals Trump has hired and used?

All those Polish workers doing the tear down of the buildings in the way of Trump towers
and his Bedminster, N.J. golf course was built by Costa Ricans.

Btw Sky I’ll see you picking strawberries in Florida very soon no doubt and you are
a Native American too because you are worried about illegals coming into the country.

[keithbvadu2]

19. whatever bad things Donald says about violent "illegals"/undoc immigrants, he would rather import and hire them than pay

Remember:::: whatever bad things Donald says about violent "illegals"/undoc immigrants, he would rather import and hire them than pay Americans.

He only quit hiring them when it became politically inconvenient.

[Solly Mack]

9. SMH

[Demobrat]

10. Whether or not he ultimately gets deported

he and his wife, Sky’s daughter, are living in constant fear and anxiety. Their lives are hell, it’s Sky’s fault, and he doesn’t give one fuck about that.

All he cares about is puffing out his chest and boasting. “They’ll have to come through me.” As if. What an asshole.

If Jamie gets deported I hope his wife and kids go with him and Sky never sees them again. He doesn’t deserve them. Fucking scumbag.

[erodriguez]

16. It sounds like that is how it's going to go.

His wife is going crazy over this. And they've thought about moving. They need to get Sky out of their lives. He's just so toxic.

[hatrack]

30. And thinking of that suffering helps Sky pop a little vienna-sausage-sized chubby . . .

Just like his Orange Jesus.

[Demobrat]

34. They need to get out of there now.

Before TSF takes office and one of his MAGAt neighbors turns him in. Because they will, just to enjoy the cruelty.

[Celerity]

11. Zero sympathy, none. Time to pay the iron price for millions of fools. In life, shit decisions have consequences.

[arthritisR_US]

44. This is really cold and depressing to read on this sight.

[JI7]

50. Cold and depressing is people wanting others to suffer for the same things they do

but cry if it happens to them becsuse for whatever reason they are special and they aren't like there others who also did the same thing.

[arthritisR_US]

53. I don't hold that Mexican born father at fault it's his so called

“family “ ie his wife’s family et al all them who have truly sunk them , moronic assholes and totally heartless 😡

[JI7]

58. Has he cut off relations with them ?

[nycbos]

12. This scene from Airplane! comes to mind.

[allegorical oracle]

13. Watched an interview just before the Nov. election. A TV reporter was asking a

woman in one of the western states, whose husband was undocumented, whether she was afraid of deportation if TSF was elected. She said, "No, not at all. We've been law-abiding and have lived here 30 years -- they won't bother us."

It's a version of the same "It won't happen to me" that the Jews fell prey to in the 1930s.

[Demobrat]

36. They just can't seem to understand

that they have NOT been law-abiding for 30 years. They have been breaking the law for 30 years. Their EXISTENCE in this country is illegal, and what makes them criminals in the eyes of the law.

All it will take is a phone call from one of their neighbors, and poof, they’re on the radar.

If they voted for Trump they should be deported for stupidity.

[arthritisR_US]

45. Besides not having documents, what are their crimes? Did

they push up your economy too much and help lower “grocery “prices ? BTW, which your media seems reluctant in reporting and all other industries seem to be on a greed grab and so happy that piece of shit will rule your country

[Demobrat]

47. There doesn't need to be another crime

to make them vulnerable to deportation. That is the point. The ones who think they are safe because they have committed no crime are wrong. They are not safe. They are illegals. That is their crime. They just haven’t realized it yet.

[arthritisR_US]

49. I see your point and I see the legal reality that you are pointing

to, but it’s inhumane and immoral. They are not illegal, you want to see illegal just look at your fecking NEWS and their reports of your orange shitgibbon. That fecking asshole is illegal corrupt and so fecking immoral, and now the prick shit will be back I in your highest office.

[Demobrat]

55. Of course it's inhumane and immoral.

Almost beyond belief. That’s why so many have not realized it yet. It’s inconceivable to a normal person. But we’re not dealing with a normal person.

[Mustellus]

14. Thou Shalt Not....

Thou shalt not have one law for the native born, and another for the sojourner. For you yourselves were Sojourners in Egypt.

Leviticus 19.. you know that book Christians pretend they care about....

[arthritisR_US]

46. Christians always make me laugh after i vomit, hypocrisy

can be so hard on the body and mind.

[sakabatou]

15. Another victim of a face eating leopard

[bottomofthehill]

17. Too bad. Don't let the door hit ya where the lord split ya

Time to go home and leave your American born babies with your wife here

Sarcasm thingy added

[elliesmandt]

18. Just another example...

The MAGAs have no soul. They aren't Christians. At best, they are idiots!

[Nigrum Cattus]

22. It will get much worse before getting any better

[OrlandoDem2]

31. Actually it needs to get worse in order to get better.

Sorry for the innocent people who will be hurt.

[arthritisR_US]

48. I'm afraid of what's to come.

[DownriverDem]

24. Too bad

he didn't have that conversation before the election. Sad.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

27. These conversations are so uncomfortable.

I don't listen to right wing radio or podcasts. Hat's off to those who do in order to understand what the listeners are being sold.

He's poisoned my family dynamic to match his own dysfunctional experience. And he's the opposite of Christian. Never imagined sheer will would poison the ideals of this country.

[Meadowoak]

29. too bad they didn't have that conversation before he married Sky's daughter.

[Bristlecone]

25. Sky is myopic. Sorry, Jaime, but you may end up being the local martyr

[Aussie105]

28. Questions the guys loading the Deportation Bus WON'T ask you:

Who did you vote for?

How much tax have you paid over the years?

Stayed out of trouble with the law while you were here?

Did you really think there is a default expiry date on the 'undocumented' thing?

Did you not think when we were talking about deporting 'them', you might be part of 'them'?

[JT45242]

32. Mango Mussolini will try to deport any kids too..

The sinister six will come up with some 'friits of the poisonous tree' ruling that if one parent is an illegal immigrant that the children are also and can be deported.

It will not. of course, apply to Apartheid Clyde or mango Mussolini and their children.

[Demovictory9]

38. Trump will drop all his other promises but this one. I think "the browning of America"

Is something Trump takes personally.

Food prices, abortion, trans people..I don't think he really cares about.

[Demobrat]

39. I think it's the money he cares about.

Tariffs mean money in his pocket. He doesn’t have to care about the effects on the voters, because he doesn’t need them anymore. So it’s full steam ahead on bribery and corruption.
I think there will be some performative round-ups and highly publicized deportations, but after that it will become real work, and we won’t hear much about it again. Like with the wall.
But there will be a bitcoin boom/bust cycle that will take corporations and economies down with it.
JMO of course.

[Demovictory9]

40. Money and self acclaim. He will probably try to build a big monument to himself

[uponit7771]

61. Unnmnn, MAGA will keep the kids and *lose* a lot of them like they did last time

[mamacita75]

33. Alienation of

This is a really good article. I listened to it instead of reading it.

Jaime even tried to press the book pages smooth from a dog-eared marking before returning to the library to always do the right thing.
To be a good citizen. Amazing detail of just one couples life.

No wonder a majority of people want to block out the reality of what is coming for us.
TY for sharing this article.
Well written and well read by author.

[Demovictory9]

37. Agreed. Its good. Ive dropped NYT subscription a few times when they piss me off then pick it up again

Because of their exceptional content..and wordle.

I dropped after they helped drum Biden out of office. Came back last month.

[Blue_Tires]

35. Fucking Trumper pieces of shit

[JI7]

51. This is not our concern. It should be far down the list of our priorities

We need to focus on a few things. These are affordable housing, health care , and education.

Protect rights of the people and help to make sure all have fair opportunities.

Focus on the environment and dealing with climate change.

Be tough on crime and that includes people that come here illegally.

[róisín_dubh]

56. He was brought here as a baby and is a DACA recipient.

What else do you want from the guy? Should he have sorted out his status sooner, certainly? But the immigration system in the US is a hot mess, so it's not easy at all.

[JI7]

57. I didn't vote for Trump. Tell him to ask his Trump supporting family for help.

[Hotler]

60. And thery're talking unity.