(LA Times) Each time he escaped danger on the journey that would eventually bring him to California, Shamsuddin Shams made sure to video-chat with his mother. She liked it that way — to not only hear his voice but see his face, even if it betrayed anguish and fear.
She saw him after he fled his native Afghanistan for good and rode into Pakistan, after he stepped past human remains while crossing the jungles of Panama, and after he escaped, in the city of Tapachula at the southern tip of Mexico, from gunmen who demanded he give up everything he had not already lost.
But when Shams, who is 25, found himself in a Texas detention facility, facing prison time for an obscure federal crime, he made a phone call instead.
