For more than 200 days, Fernando Herrera-Cruz has been sitting in a county jail in central Missouri on immigration charges. The conditions in the jail are “very bad,” Herrera-Cruz told Truthout , with the help of a translator. “There are some guards who are very racist towards immigrants.”

Herrera-Cruz, who is 25 years old, left Mexico to come to the United States to work with his brother for a roofing business in St. Louis. He was travelling in rural Missouri for a job when the trailer on his truck got a flat tire. Herrera-Cruz says a passerby stopped, began harassing him, and called the police. When local sheriff’s deputies arrived, instead of helping with the flat tire, they arrested Herrera-Cruz.

According to a Department of Justice press release , Herrera-Cruz was picked up on M

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