Catherine Cool should be preparing for the birth of her first child with her husband beside her. Instead, Heriberto “Eddie” Reyes-Ochoa is being held in ICE custody at the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, after a minor traffic crash with no injuries pulled him out of the life they had spent nearly two decades building together. Catherine is pregnant, their baby is due in January, and the man who supported her through law school, the death of her father and years of trying to conceive is now locked away from the home where they expected to begin their next chapter as parents.
The separation happened quickly. On Aug. 21, Eddie was driving to his job at a marine construction company when he was involved in a wreck. No one was injured. A Mississippi state trooper cited him for following too closely and driving without a license, something undocumented immigrants cannot obtain under Mississippi law. Catherine was there when the trooper told Eddie he had an immigration warrant. What began as a roadside encounter over two traffic misdemeanors ended with Eddie being taken to the Hancock County Jail on an immigration hold and eventually transferred into federal immigration detention.
For Catherine, the consequences were immediate. She had graduated from law school only months earlier, after years in which Eddie had been the primary provider supporting their household while she studied. Her father had died the previous year, and Catherine said Eddie had carried her through that loss. Then came the pregnancy they had almost stopped believing would happen. After years of struggling to conceive, Catherine learned she was pregnant a week after graduating. Eddie’s detention arrived just as the future they had worked toward together was finally beginning to take shape.
That future had already required years of navigating the immigration system. Eddie came to the United States as a teenager in 2006 and eventually made a life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He met Catherine while they were both young, and the two later married. Rather than avoiding immigration authorities, they spent years disclosing Eddie’s status to the government while pursuing a legal pathway for him to leave the United States briefly, complete consular processing and return with lawful permanent residency.
Their progress was substantial. The couple secured approval of an I-130 Petition for Alien Relative, establishing Catherine, a U.S. citizen, as Eddie’s qualifying spouse. They then pursued an I-601A provisional unlawful-presence waiver, which was approved after roughly three years of waiting. The final major step was the DS-260 immigrant visa application. Catherine submitted that form on the same day Eddie was arrested.
The contradiction now sits at the center of their family’s crisis. Eddie and Catherine had spent years doing what the immigration system required of them, disclosing his status, filing petitions and waiting through each stage of the process. Yet before that process could reach its conclusion, a minor crash became the opening through which local law enforcement delivered Eddie into ICE custody.
That transfer was not an isolated accident of bureaucracy. The Mississippi Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Highway Patrol, and the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office both participate in the federal 287(g) program. Through those agreements, local law-enforcement agencies assist federal immigration enforcement, creating a pipeline through which encounters that begin as state or local matters can end in ICE detention.
For Eddie, that pipeline turned two traffic citations into the loss of his freedom and separation from his pregnant wife. He was taken first to the Hancock County Jail and later transferred to Adams County Correctional Center, leaving Catherine to return home without him. Their immigration paperwork was still moving and their baby was still coming, but Eddie was no longer home to share either part of the future he and Catherine had spent years preparing for.
The government then made the harm worse by publicly attaching a serious criminal allegation to Eddie that local authorities said was false. When the Mississippi Free Press asked ICE about his detention, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed Eddie had been charged with felony hit and run in addition to driving without a license and following too closely.
Hancock County officials told the publication that Eddie had never been charged with felony hit and run. The charges against him were the two misdemeanors arising from the crash. Catherine had been present at the scene and knew Eddie had not fled from it. After the Mississippi Free Press confronted ICE with the county’s account, DHS returned with a revised statement. The felony allegation had disappeared.
That correction matters because the false allegation transformed the public description of Eddie’s arrest. A minor crash with no injuries was initially presented by the federal government as a felony hit-and-run case. The revised statement removed that claim only after it was challenged, leaving behind a documented example of how quickly an immigrant already in government custody could be publicly branded with a serious criminal accusation that had never been filed.
DHS continued to defend Eddie’s detention after correcting the felony allegation. The department said a pending immigration application does not confer legal status and stated that Eddie would remain in ICE custody while removal proceedings continued. Its response also invoked the administration’s broader claim that immigration enforcement is focused on the “worst of the worst.”
Eddie’s actual circumstances tell a different story. He had not been arrested for a violent offense. He had not been charged with the felony DHS initially attributed to him. He was working, married to a U.S. citizen, living openly in Mississippi and moving through an immigration process that had already produced major approvals. ICE nevertheless caged him after a minor crash and left Catherine to continue their pregnancy and household without him.
The detention has also forced Eddie and Catherine into another legal fight before they could complete the immigration process they had spent years pursuing. Eddie’s attorney, Brandon Riches, said he intends to file a habeas corpus petition challenging the detention and seeking a path toward judicial review and release. Riches has argued that Eddie’s long-established life in Mississippi, his marriage, years of immigration filings and Catherine’s pregnancy all weigh against keeping him locked away while the government decides his future.
That fight is unfolding against a much larger struggle over mandatory immigration detention. A 2025 Board of Immigration Appeals decision broadened the government’s use of mandatory detention for people who entered the United States without inspection, making bond far harder to obtain for many immigrants regardless of how long they have lived in the country or how deeply rooted their families have become.
The consequences of that policy are not abstract in Eddie’s case. Mandatory detention means Catherine cannot simply ask an immigration judge to look at their marriage, Eddie’s work history, the approvals already obtained in his immigration case, her pregnancy and their home in Mississippi and decide whether keeping him caged serves any legitimate purpose. The system can separate them first, then force the family to fight for a judge to review that detention.
A federal appeals fight has challenged that structure. In July, a Fifth Circuit panel held that people subjected to this type of mandatory detention have due-process rights and should receive bond hearings within 90 days. The full court later vacated that decision and agreed to reconsider the question. While judges continue debating the scope of those rights, families like Eddie and Catherine’s continue living with the consequence of detention in real time.
Catherine last saw Eddie at the Hancock County Jail. She said he was wearing orange and his feet were shackled. Eddie cried as they said goodbye. Catherine managed to hold herself together inside the jail, but when she later described what losing him from the household meant, the weight of the separation broke through. “He took care of me,” she said.
That care had shaped the life around them. Eddie was constantly working, both for the household and at home. He tended the garden Catherine is now trying to keep alive, growing papaya, peppers, succulents, cacti, agave, spinach and milkweed that attracted monarch butterflies. Their home is also crowded with the animals they accumulated during years when they thought having children might not happen: dogs, cats, bearded dragons and a parrot. Catherine said their Doberman, Sultan, still goes outside looking for Eddie.
Those details matter because ICE did not remove Eddie from an empty space. It took him out of an established household where another person depended on him, where a child was on the way, where years of immigration paperwork were still progressing and where ordinary responsibilities continued whether Eddie was allowed to come home or not. Catherine has relatives and friends helping her, but the support around her does not erase the person ICE took away.
Their community has begun responding to Eddie’s detention. Catherine’s sister, Savannah Corbitt, wrote publicly about Eddie’s detention, and supporters planned a march at the Bay St. Louis Bridge calling for his return. Their anger is rooted in the same contradiction visible throughout the case: Eddie and Catherine spent years trying to resolve his status through the government’s own process, only to have a minor traffic crash become the event that tore them apart before that process could finish.
Catherine has described the years of immigration paperwork as an uphill battle in which each step forward seemed to be followed by another obstacle. Catherine and Eddie followed the process they were given, filing the required petitions, waiting through years of processing and securing major approvals before reaching the consular stage that could lead Eddie to permanent residency. Catherine submitted the final major application on the same day the government took her husband away.
The harm cannot be reduced to Eddie’s immigration status or the paperwork still pending in his case. Catherine is carrying their child while her husband remains caged hours from home. Eddie is missing the months when they should be preparing together for the birth they spent years hoping would happen. Their immigration process continues under the shadow of detention, and their family now has to fight for something much more immediate than a green card: getting Eddie home.
January will arrive whether ICE releases him or not. Catherine’s pregnancy will continue, their child will be born, and the months ICE has already taken from this family cannot be returned to them. The unresolved question is now painfully simple: after years of following the government’s immigration process, will Eddie Reyes-Ochoa still be sitting inside an ICE detention center when his wife gives birth to the child they waited so long to have?
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