10 hours Ago By Jenn Gidman
Jaime Cachua came to the US from Mexico as an infant when his mother found work, and as such is here illegally. With President-elect Trump pledging mass deportations, the 33-year-old longtime resident of Rome, Georgia, fears what's to come after Inauguration Day for himself, his wife Jennifer, and their 7-year-old twins, per a profile in the . The extra bitter pill? Cachua has family members who voted for the very man who's threatening to break up his family.
"There's nothing to stop them from rounding me up once he takes office," Cachua recently tried to explain to his father-in-law, Sky Atkins, an animal control and corrections officer who loves his daughter's husband but who voted for Trump, partly because he believes Trump will help stem the number of immigrants coming in over the southern border. "A devout Christian, a great father, a model family man" is how Atkins, 45, describes his son-in-law, telling the younger man that his vote for Trump was "not about you," but about "protecting our rights as a sovereign country." Cachua, who has a temporary work permit through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and his wife say "they'd spent years running up against the obstacles and expenses of the country's narrow pathway to citizenship.
" Even now, the process for him to become a US citizen seems too "expensive, protracted, and improbable," including him having to return for a time to Mexico first. When Cachua, who barely speaks Spanish, told Atkins that "I've never felt like a foreigner until now," Atkins tried to reassure him: "I'm not going to let anything happen that puts your family at risk." Cachua's reply: "It already did.
" More on Cachua's situation . (More stories.).
