The Sunday Read: ‘The Alienation of Jaime Cachua’

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.

“We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” Jaime told him. “There’s a chance we could lose everything.”

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.

“I’m going to be straight with you,” Sky 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.”

“It is about me,” Jaime said. “That’s the thing I don’t understand.”

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