BAY ST. LOUIS—Linda Jablonowski remembers the day her grandson-in-law, Heriberto “Eddie” Reyes-Ochoa, taught her how to raise worms while working on the family’s farm. Eddie took a large wooden barrel and showed her how he used leaves and water to compact his own soil as a home for the worms to tunnel through.
Jablonowski said she and Eddie formed a special bond not only with each other but also with the little worms they raised on the farm—a testament to the genuine care and gentle demeanor Eddie took towards every living being, no matter how small.
“How can you explain the goodness of humanity when it’s just in this one person’s standing?” Jablonowski said.
ICE detained Eddie, whose family lives in Kiln, Mississippi, on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, after he had a wreck on the way to his job at a marine construction company. Jablonowski said the first thing she felt was fear.
Eddie and his wife, Catherine Cool, were preparing to welcome a baby to the family when ICE detained Eddie. The couple has been married for 12 years, were together for 16, and have known each other since they were young teens.
A ‘Walk for Eddie’
On Sunday, Linda Jablonowski, her granddaughter Catherine and other members of the family joined friends and community members at the Bay St. Louis bridge for a Walk for Eddie to advocate for Eddie Reyes-Ochoa’s release from custody.
Eddie’s uncle brought him into the country as a young teen before returning to Mexico shortly after and leaving him in the country alone. Eddie worked hard to build a life for himself, fell in love and financially supported his wife as she attended law school. For years, Catherine and Eddie have been trying to take all the necessary steps for Eddie to legally obtain his green card and eventually his citizenship. They were nearing the final stages this year.
Savannah Corbitt, Eddie’s sister-in-law, told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 28 that his kind and gentle nature is missed at home as the family prays for his return.
“We want to live with him again, have him at our table again, have him in our lives again,” Corbitt said.
Savannah described Eddie as “the guy you can call on to do anything,” noting his helpfulness to not just her but the entire family and the many animals he cares for on the family’s farm.
Addison Corbitt, Savannah’s daughter and Eddie’s niece, told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 28 that, as a 14-year-old herself, she can imagine the hardship Eddie faced when he entered the United States and was left on his own. As a young teen, she said it’s understandable the first thing on Eddie’s mind would be survival rather than securing a lawyer.
“If I were to come over here at 14 not knowing a language, I would want to learn how to survive, learn how to work, learn the language, feed myself,” Addison said.
Alicia Lick, Eddie’s mother-in-law, said she organized the walk to show support for Eddie and “put a light on a situation that’s happening all across America.”
The Walk for Eddie began around 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 30. Dozens of participants gathered at the entrance to the Bay St. Louis bridge and marched across the bridge and back, carrying signs of support for Eddie.
“We are not asking for any special treatment. We want him to finish the immigration process,” Lick said. “There are so many others that are in the same situation right now.”
Kristi Johnson, a member of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Long Beach, Mississippi, where Jablonowski is a member, said around a dozen people from the church came out to support Eddie’s family and participate in the walk. She said the church also does outreach for people who have been wrongfully detained.
“I don’t think that people who are going through the process and have been in the process and paying taxes for multiple years should be deported and detained,” Johnson said.
‘A Nation of Immigrants’
Alicia Lick said part of her motivation for organizing the march was to bring attention not just to Eddie’s situation, but also to the current reality of being an immigrant in the United States.
“It needs attention because as a Republican I did not vote for this; I voted for criminals to be put away,” Lick said. “Eddie, to me, makes America a better place to live in.”
The Cato Institute found that only 5% of individuals booked into ICE custody last year between October and November had violent criminal convictions.
As part of a Republican family, Lick said she and others of the family have had friends reach out, also expressing concerns and discontentment with the Republican Party.
“We are a nation of immigrants,” Lick said, noting that America began as a country of settlers and immigrants. “If we don’t have that culture that’s coming in that makes us great—‘What are we going to be?’”
For Lick, immigrants are a foundational part of America’s origins as a country.
“We keep polishing all these statues, fixing pools, cleaning up streets, but on the inside we’re dirty,” Lick said. “Our hearts are dirty and a strong America can’t have a dirty heart. I think we’re weak as a country.”
Other friends and family of Eddie shared similar sentiments.
Savannah Corbitt, Eddie’s sister-in-law, made a post on Facebook raising awareness about Eddie’s case where she publicly shared that she voted Republican.
She told the Mississippi Free Press in an Aug. 28 interview that when she voted Republican, she thought the party’s focus would be “making America safe.”
“Secure borders, deporting criminals, stopping drug trafficking, human trafficking—those are things to me that are important,” Savannah said. “I never in a million years thought that we would use our resources, our tax dollars, to tear apart families that have done nothing wrong in this country.”
Savannah said she didn’t realize that was what she was voting for and she thinks a lot of other Republican voters may share the same sentiment.
Now, she’s making an effort to educate her kids and publicly emphasize the importance of speaking up when you believe something isn’t right.
Savannah and Catherine Cool’s great-grandmother and great-grandfather fled Poland during the Holocaust. Savannah said she has a deep respect for the unique nature of those atrocities, and that no direct equivalence could be drawn. But she acknowledged “some striking resemblances” to the current ICE crackdowns and deportations.
Savannah and Catherine shared concerns that other minority populations beyond immigrants might be the next target.
“These are clear red flags,” Catherine said.
“When you see something that’s not right, you speak out because if we don’t speak out these things keep happening —and history does repeat itself,” Savannah said.
Pablo Corona, who helped Lick organize the walk, said he’s been friends with Eddie for nearly 20 years. They met when Eddie was working at the restaurant Los Tres Amigos—his first job in Bay St. Louis after he came to the United States.
“We’ve been friends, we’ve been in touch ever since and we’ve been with each other for all these years,” Corona said. “He’s a very good person, good human being.”
Corona said he believes a lot of people are being misinformed on how the process of becoming a legal immigrant in the United States actually works.
As an immigrant himself, Corona said the process to become a citizen is longer and more difficult than most Americans realize. He said at the time he became a citizen, it was nearly impossible to obtain citizenship through legal processes without being married to a U.S. citizen. Even though Corona was married to a U.S. citizen, he said it still took years for him to gain U.S. citizenship.
“It took me nine years to get a green card, another five years to be able to be a U.S. citizen,” Corona said. “So the path to get legal is not easy and for some people, especially for Chinese and Mexicans, is nearly impossible.”
Back when Corona was still waiting on approval of his green card, he said he went to a border patrol roadblock and they let him go because he had papers proving he was in the process of obtaining a green card. Eddie had also filed paperwork and was seeking a green card when he was detained.
Corona said that for Eddie, who went through years of the legal process and was waiting on a green card, “there is no reason for him to be incarcerated.”
“I really believe that the only reason Eddie got picked up is because of these hard policies right now with President Trump,” referring to the Trump administration’s long-stated goals of mass deportations as a centerpiece of his term in office.
Corona said he’s a Republican and voted for Trump, but he feels the current administration is “making a big mistake” by going after hard-working people who don’t have a criminal record.
But to the Trump administration, people like Eddie Reyes-Ochoa are the precise targets of the crackdown. When the Mississippi Free Press first contacted ICE about Eddie’s arrest, a DHS spokesperson inaccurately stated that he’d been charged with “hit and run,” a serious felony. That turned out to be entirely false. When this reporter challenged the allegation, ICE revised their statement to excise the fabricated charge, but still wrote the following.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, ICE is targeting the worst of the worst,” the statement read. “Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.”
Still, Corona’s disagreements with the administration haven’t shaken his core political identity. “If you asked me: ‘Would I vote Republican again?’ I probably will. I probably will continue to be a Republican,” Corona said. “Just because we have a person that thinks this way doesn’t mean that every Republican thinks that way.”
A Missing Piece of the Family
Alicia Lick said without her son-in-law present, the family’s dynamic has changed “tremendously.”
“Our life will be drastically different without him and not something that I would even want to spend time thinking about,” Lick said.
Linda Jablonowski said she hopes the march sends a message to Eddie that people are supporting him.
With a baby on the way, Catherine said the position the family is in is very “disheartening.”
Savannah Corbitt said it’s been scary for the family because they don’t know when the next time is they’ll get to spend time together.
“We want to live with him again. We want to have him at our table again, have him in our lives again,” she said.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of immigration and read past stories here.
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