All morning, the dog owners stopped at the picnic table, sat down, and wrote letters to a man they knew because he cared for their pets—a man from a country most of them had never heard of before he entered their lives, now locked away in a detention center more than a hundred miles away.

“Mussa,” wrote one young woman in jeans with a Pomeranian in her lap, “Sometimes life puts us on a pause we don’t really get, but I know better days are coming for you. Don’t lose faith. You’ve got people who care about you.”

“Mussa,” wrote another young woman whose lab-bulldog mix played nearby, “We miss you so much.” She had a tattoo of a stag on her left arm and large gold hoop earrings. “It’s not the same without you. You are valued. You are loved.”

“Mussa,” wrote an elderly woman in the voice of h

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