Their Unlikely Alliance Began at Whataburger. Can They Reform a Texas Jail?
With her 4-year-old in the back seat, Dalila Reynoso parked between a gun store and a bail bond agency in downtown Tyler, Texas, peering through the window at the Smith County Jail. When she saw a deputy without a mask on, she snapped a photo. When she saw another fail to wipe down his vehicle, she jotted it down in her notebook.
It was mid-April, and Reynoso had begun regularly staking out the facility in this conservative east Texas county of 230,000, in the hopes of protecting those detained inside. She was already a local activist, but COVID-19 and the threat it poses to vulnerable people in prisons and jails has turned her into a full-blown citizen watchdog.
She now tracks the jail’s population and the coronavirus case count, questions Sheriff Larry Smith and other officials in public and private forums, collects complaints from jailers and detainees, counsels distraught family members and spurs local media coverage, all to keep those in jail safe from the virus and other dangers, including inadequate mental health care.
Reynoso, 38, began working in immigration advocacy after President Donald Trump’s election and soon began monitoring conditions in the local jail, as well. While many of her peers were bemoaning Trump’s policies toward the undocumented, she was coming to realize how many key decisions were made by people she could persuade face to face.
“At a local level there is so much
