LOCKED OUT
Rachel Rodriguez remembers her son Ruben being a very attached child. Even as Ruben got older and started getting into trouble, the mother and son remained close. “He was always just right there, right next to me,” she says. In 2013, when he was 20, Ruben went to prison on a 20-year sentence for a robbery. But Rodriguez considered herself lucky that he got sent to a lockup about an hour’s drive from her home in Corpus Christi. “I visited him every weekend, like religiously, because I wanted us to stay close while he was in there,” she says. “I thought we both needed that.”
Less than three years into the sentence, however, their communication came to an abrupt halt. After her last visit with him, in June 2016, corrections officers claimed they’d found contraband on Ruben and kicked Rodriguez off his list of approved visitors. Rodriguez, who was never charged or formally accused of any wrongdoing, has for years asked prison officials what she has to do to see her son again. Her only recourse has been sending letters to an internal review committee to appeal the ban every six months. The sole response she ever gets back is a boilerplate five-sentence letter with no explanation. “Just that same denial letter every time, that’s it,” she says. “At this point, I have no idea if they’ll ever let me see him again.”
It’s unclear how many people are currently barred from visiting friends and family members
