By Bethany Blankley
The Center Square

Texas state Rep. Jay Dean, R-Longview, is calling on President Donald Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and others to demand that Mexican authorities release an East Texan languishing in a Mexican prison.

One of Dean’s constituents, 23-year-old Caden Hawkins of Hallsville, was arrested by Mexican authorities after getting lost and crossing into Mexico just south of the New Mexico border. He is currently “being held as a cash asset for a corrupt federal judge in Juarez, Mexico,” Dean told The Center Square in an exclusive interview.

Caden’s family members are “true salt of the earth conservatives. They thought they could follow a legal process and relied on crooked attorneys they hired in Mexico to help Caden and have been milked ever since,” Dean said. “We’re at a point in time where it’s going to take the highest level of government to make the Mexican government do the right thing and release this young man.

“I want this kid home by Christmastime to be home with his family,” he said.

Caden’s family initially paid Mexican attorneys $25,000 to represent him and in April they didn’t show up to his hearing, Dean told The Center Square. “His family has been extorted for months, forced to pay more than $1,000 a week just for Caden to have hot water, toilet paper and 15-minute phone call home,” he said. “Crooked Mexican authorities are in no hurry to have a hearing scheduled,” he said. A new attorney the family hired from Houston hasn’t been effective, he added.

On March 2, Caden was driving 17 hours from a job site in Tempe, Arizona, to east Texas when his GPS redirected him south off of I-10 to Columbus, New Mexico. If he had kept going straight through Deming, he would have arrived in El Paso in an hour and a half. Instead, he drove south into Puerto Palomas de Villa, Mexico. The area is famous because of a 1916 attack by Mexican general Francisco Pancho Villa, which prompted the U.S. to send 10,000 troops there during the Mexican Expedition.

It’s also famous because Mexican cartels control an illicit human and drug smuggling operation in the region where illegal entries increased after Texas border security efforts ramped up under Abbott, The Center Square reported.

Caden has overcome much in his life, including a traumatic brain injury from working in the oil fields, his family says. He chose to reenter the workforce rather than live off of government benefits, Dean explained. Extremely confused, disoriented and afraid, he found himself surrounded by seven Mexican Federales. They searched his truck, found 10 .308 cartridges he and his dad use for hog hunting and a loaded pistol, Dean said. He was arrested and remains in a prison in Juarez.

Jaurez is located in the Mexican state of Chihuahua whose governor, María Eugenia Campos Galván, signed a memorandum of understanding with Abbott during the height of the border crisis in April 2022, The Center Square reported. Dean is hoping Abbott can use this relationship to help get Caden home.

Dean says the family sent Caden’s firearms paperwork to his attorneys in Mexico to prove they were legally purchased in the U.S. They were unaware that noncitizens are prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition in Mexico.

Only Mexican citizens can own small caliber handguns and only after they undergo a criminal background check, psychiatric test and complete a firearms course, according to the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA). They can only purchase firearms through SEDENA at one location in Mexico City, The Center Square reported.

Caden is not the first American to accidentally enter Mexico with firearms and be imprisoned. In March 2013, U.S. Marine Corps veteran Andrew Tahmooressi found himself in a similar situation. Tahmooressi, who served two combat tours in Afghanistan and had PTSD from his service, left San Diego and got turned around and accidentally entered Tijuana, Mexico, Sinaloa Cartel territory.

Mexican authorities found 400 rounds of ammunition and three loaded guns in his pickup truck that were all legally purchased in the U.S. (a .45 caliber handgun, 12-gauge shotgun and AR-15 style rifle). He was immediately arrested and imprisoned in Tijuana’s La Mesa Prison. He was later moved to El Hongo Prison, in Tecate, where he unsuccessfully tried to escape.

At the time, CEO of Concerned Veterans for America Pete Hegseth, who is now the Secretary of War, called on Congress to act. Hegseth also expressed concerns about his deteriorating mental and physical condition. Congressional hearings followed and a group of bipartisan members of Congress and others demanded his release, which ultimately happened in October 2014, 214 days after his arrest.

On Dec. 2, Caden will have been imprisoned for 40 weeks, or 280 days, two months longer than Tahmooressi was.

He is “a son, a brother, the best bubba ever to his nephew, a fiancé, a grandson. He is our world. We want him home with us,” his mother, April Thomas, said. “Caden is the type of person that would help anyone out and he has done it many times. He is not a criminal and doesn’t even have a criminal history. He is a good person and trusted his GPS. This has been our living hell for 9 months, 9 months too long.”