While some Richmonders celebrate Hispanic heritage, others lament loss of freedoms

Yenni Jimenez Acosta, Contributing Writer

Heciel Nieves Bonilla, Assistant News Editor 

Nelie Ceron-Cruz, a fourth-year business student at VCU, found out in May her father had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, through a phone call by her sister.

“That’s when she told me, she was like, ‘Oh, Dad got caught, like Dad got detained,’” Ceron-Cruz said. “I didn’t really start thinking about it until I started driving to work; ‘my dad, like my dad’s really gotten taken away from me.’”

Her father works in construction. An ICE raid on his workplace resulted in two vans’ worth of people detained, including him. 

While Ceron-Cruz’s father was moved between detention centers out-of-state, her family juggled keeping their construction business afloat while moving through detention and immigration processes.

Only her family’s lawyer showed respect throughout the legal battle, Ceron-Cruz said. Everyone else met them with an unfriendly attitude — which she attributed to racial profiling. Anytime she or her sister name-dropped her father over phone calls with immigration offices they were treated like they were “stupid” — like they did not understand.

“Just because my dad’s Hispanic, you’re just gonna treat me like that?” Ceron-Cruz said. “Matter of fact, just because you know that I’m Mexican, you’re gonna automatically assume that I don’t understand when I’m the one who called you, when I’m the one who’s asking you about information?”

Ceron-Cruz’s father is one of thousands of Virginians who have suffered from a surge in immigration-related detentions and arrests in streets, public areas, workplaces and even homes under President Donald Trump’s second term.  

As the third week of September signified the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month — which includes the independence days of seven Latin-American countries — some Hispanic Richmonders are forgoing this year’s celebrations out of fear as others bemoan a loss of freedoms.

On Sept. 8, a week before the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Supreme Court greenlit ICE agents in Los Angeles to racially profile people and identify immigrants to stop and detain based on “whether Spanish is being spoken, whether English is being spoken with an accent and employment location,” according to NPR. 

Many localities around the country decided to cancel events in light of ICE arrests and racial profiling. Some Hispanic Heritage Month events in Richmond have continued, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Family Day on Sept. 13 and the Richmond Kickers’ Hispanic Heritage Night on Sept. 20 — as well as upcoming events at VCU and other Richmond schools.

Juan Urrea and his wife Claudia, originally from Colombia, started their business My Empanada eight years ago in farmers markets around Richmond. Their vending cart is often set up between the T. Edward Temple Building and the Student Commons. They now own a storefront in the West End that serves as the business’s main location. 

They aimed to bring traditional South American street food to Virginia, Urrea said. They wanted to cater to Richmond locals generally rather than the Hispanic community specifically. 

Hispanic Heritage Month has changed in the past few years, Urrea said. Much of the Hispanic community is afraid and staying at home because they do not know if it is safe to leave. My Empanada’s new focus is to just keep the business running. 

Urrea tries to help less fortunate members of the community by watching out for them and keeping them motivated. Next month, My Empanada will be at Richmond’s Folk Festival, which he said is an equal-opportunity event and a “relief” to be a part of. 

“A lot of events at this time [in] the past years are not happening now, people stopped celebrating because there is no reason to celebrate,” Urrea said. “I don’t see that Hispanic Heritage Month is on the agenda for the country at this time.”

Fourth-year exercise science student Sharon Zeballos is the co-culture chair of VCU’s Latine Student Association. The club has many events planned in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month — but at the same time, they have been working to educate students on a more difficult matter: their rights in the face of ICE actions.

“I think that LSA overall did a really good job with trying to get our members to be educated on the topic, and especially with the red cards as well, making sure that everyone is aware that things are happening,” Zeballos said, referring to business card-sized legal rights reminders they have distributed with the help of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. 

VCU history professor and Migration Studies Lab co-director Daniel Morales said current deportation and arrest actions reflect a break from historical precedent. 

“Trump often talks about Eisenhower, and he talks about Ronald Reagan,” Morales said. “You have just the punitive aspect of it, of rounding people up, of sending people across the border, of mass deportations, without increasing any legal means for people to come here. In fact, they went to the opposite, as they want to lower legal migration as well.”

The Trump administration has worked toward this by denying refugees and people holding various kinds of visas, according to Morales.

“The U.S., for the first time in its history, will probably experience a drop in the number of people who live in the country, and that’s because of massive enforcement and then the drying up of legal migration into the country,” Morales said.

On Sept. 17, a solicitation was posted on the federal government’s website for contracting and procurement that indicated ICE is urgently seeking office space in Richmond, among other cities, according to NPR. 

Carlos “El Gallo” Ordaz-Nunez, owner of local Mexican street food restaurant TBT El Gallo, said he sees the effects of the federal immigration purge regularly at his restaurant in the form of fear from his Hispanic staff. 

Ordaz-Nunez compared the looming presence of ICE to the Chupacabra or “goat-sucker,” a folkloric monster of Puerto Rican origin known for draining the blood of livestock, waiting under beds or around street corners, made real.

The self-policing that results from ICE’s actions prevents people from representing their cultures openly, according to Ordaz-Nunez. He said his parents came to the U.S. so he could be whoever he wanted, which he considers “the most beautiful thing” about this country. 

“I can love who I want, I can chase dreams recklessly here, I can pursue liberties here that other countries don’t have,” Ordaz-Nunez said. “And then to be told by the leadership of this country that, ‘no you can’t be yourself anymore, no you can’t express yourself this way, no you can’t chase these dreams that we told you you could,’ it seems extremely anti-American, extremely against the ideals of what this f****** country was based on.”

Ordaz-Nunez cited the quote on the Statue of Liberty as one of his favorites: “give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

“I don’t think anybody loves America the way that an immigrant does,” Ordaz-Nunez said. “That it takes a special kind of love and affection to leave everything you know, to sacrifice everything you come from, your culture, your customs, your food your family to go somewhere for an opportunity for a dream and it’s a specific sort of crazy, a specific sort of optimism and hope and this country was founded on that, it was founded on people leaving to come create something better and beautiful and pure.”

The Latino community will be able to overcome all of this through positivity, empathy and love, Ordaz-Nunez said, noting his community’s daily contributions to the country through their culture, work and art. 

“Brown hands move this economy,” Ordaz-Nunez said. “Brown hands feed this country, brown hands have woven the tapestry of what the United States is and we can’t lose sight of that. But ultimately we will be loud, we will be positive and we will lead with love and empathy.”

News Editor Molly Manning contributed to this article.