GET IN LINE. FOLLOW THE RULES. GO TO JAIL.
IT WAS FROM TWO small faces on a video monitor that Ansly Damus learned the trees outside his jail cell were turning colors. It was late October, and Damus, a 42-year-old former teacher from Haiti who legally claimed asylum at the border in 2016, had not been allowed outside in two years.
The faces belonged to Melody Hart and Gary Benjamin, a couple in their 60s who for the past eight months had been making the hourlong drive from Cleveland to visit Damus nearly every week. They’d never seen him in person. Inmates in the Geauga County jail can only speak to friends and family through webcams, and Hart and Benjamin were sitting in a narrow room with 10 screens. The room was mostly empty, save for two other groups huddled around video monitors. As they talked to Damus, a timer on Benjamin’s cellphone counted down from 30 minutes, after which the video line would be cut.
When Damus started his journey to America, he imagined he would arrive at the US border, spend a few days in government custody, and then be released while his case made its way through the asylum process. That’s how the government had done it until recently. Instead, he was sent to a county jail in Ohio, a state to which he had zero connection.
In Haiti, Damus had taught ethics, math, and physics, but he said he fled in 2014 after a gang beat him for
