Justino Vixtha’s May 22 detainment by ICE has been rough on his wife, Melissa Vixtha, and the couple’s three daughters. Melissa poses for a portrait with Rubi, 14, left, and Priscilla, 10. Korrina, 15, wasn’t available. “I just want him home,” Melissa said. “I want our family back, our life back. My kids were happy. We were happy. This has put us straight through hell.” Photo (c) Michelle Gabel.

It was bad enough, Carol Watson said, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested the head of her landscaping crew in May, the busiest time of year at her greenhouse near Syracuse, New York.

But what two ICE officers said when they told her they had arrested Justino Vixtha made it worse.

“They told me they didn’t have to arrest him,” Watson said. “He has legitimate documentation. They said it was just ‘their call.’ ”

Vixtha, 44, has been in the

When people care enough to recommend a book, I find, it always pays to read that book. Then I get the benefit of the writing, the knowledge, and the imagination or the exploration, of the author. And I learn something about the recommender and what she cares about, or what he finds fascinating.

So just now, I am reading a wonderful book, A Gentleman in Moscow, at the suggestion of a wonderful friend.

Amor Towles wrote A Gentleman in Moscow; it follows his debut novel, Rules of Civility, which was a New York Times bestseller. That was a great read, too, but A Gentleman in Moscow is very different. It’s set, of course, in Moscow—in one hotel in Moscow,—and it spans the time from 1922 until 1964 or so. I haven’t finished the book yet, but I believe that, within its pages, our hero, Alexander Ilyich Rostov, former poet and…

Award-winning author and editor Silvia Moreno-García has put together a remarkable StoryBundle full of speculative fiction by Latinx authors in the U.S.

You decide what price you want to pay — for $5 (or more), you receive four books in any ebook format:

• Virgins & Tricksters by Rosalie Morales Kearns (you can read what I wrote about this book in Putting the I in Speculative: Looking at U.S. Latino/a Writers and Stories)
• The Haunted Girl by Lisa Bradley (read Lisa talk about her writing at the Nuestras Voces/Our Voices series I published at my first blog )
• Lords of the Earth by David Bowles (read my Q & A with David here)
• The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santería by Carlos Hernandez (you can read more about it in my article Latino Lit is Alive and Well and Living in Queens and Nebraska)

If you pay at…