In Siler City, Fear of ICE Hangs Over Latino Community

El Vínculo Hispano operates out of a small brick building on the western edge of Siler City, where coffee shops and convenience stores give way to green fields. Known in English as the Hispanic Liaison, the organization for three decades has supported the cultural traditions and legal needs of Chatham County’s Latino residents. 

And every September, the nonprofit throws a killer party. 

“You see a whole stage of people playing instruments. There’s people dancing in traditional clothes,” said Marlon C.M., a junior at Jordan-Matthews High School who volunteered at the Hispanic Heritage Fiesta last year. “You see Hispanic food vendors selling traditional quesadillas, elotes, tamales, chuchitos.” 

The Fiesta has everything, Marlon said: sombreros, jewelry, flags, keychains, counseling services, a TV raffle, a climate change advocacy group, a women’s rights organization. Last year’s six-hour event was held at Shakori Hills, 72 acres of rolling woods and meadow a short drive from downtown Siler City. Five thousand people attended.

“You’re surrounded with people of your own, knowing that it’s the happiest place you’re going to be,” said Marlon, who like many people interviewed for this story asked to be identified by only part of his name due to immigration concerns.

This year, the Hispanic Liaison hoped to continue its partnership with Shakori Hills and build on the momentum of last year’s event. Instead, the organization announced in July that it was canceling the Fiesta because of a political climate in which community members felt unsafe congregating in large numbers. 

According to Liaison founder and executive director Ilana Dubester, many of the organization’s 200 volunteers worried about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showing up at the event or setting up checkpoints en route to the location. Instead, the group held a much smaller “Festejo” celebration on September 20 in downtown Siler City, where many attendees could arrive on foot. 

“It’s enraging that these politics of fear are infiltrating our community in such a big way,” Dubester said. But “the main consideration was our people feeling safe and joyous. And if that’s not going to happen, if our volunteers are worried about helping, then, no, there’s no reason to increase anxiety in our community because of a celebration.”

President Donald Trump promised a wide-scale crackdown on illegal immigration in his second term and has largely followed through with raids on workplaces and a massive expansion of new federal detention centers. That includes negotiations to convert a shuttered private prison in Eastern North Carolina into an ICE detention facility. Congress has obliged his efforts by tripling the budget for ICE, and the state legislature passed two bills this summer bolstering immigration enforcement (only one has become law). 

Taken together, the actions have alarmed many of the state’s 1.1 million Latino residents. Travis Patterson, a member of the Siler City Board of Commissioners who also works for local nonprofit Communities in Schools, said he noticed absences among Latino students at Jordan-Matthews High School after Trump was reelected. “Students were not coming to school for fear that they would be approached by ICE,” Patterson said. 

Now, community leaders and residents worry that the Fiesta’s cancellation is a harbinger of increased isolation for the Latino community in Siler City, potentially leading to lower school attendance rates or more people staying home from work. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s Second First Year

Siler City is the incorporated town with the highest percentage of Latino residents in North Carolina. As of 2020, more than half of Siler City’s 7,700 residents identified as Hispanic or Latino and spoke Spanish at home. 

Mexican bakeries and Salvadoran pupuserías dot the town’s streets. A dual language program is now available for public school students from kindergarten through 12th grade. St. Julia Catholic Church has incorporated many Latin American traditions, from Our Lady of Guadalupe celebrations to Via Crucis, an annual outdoor reenactment of the crucifixion. Of the church’s nine regular Masses, four are in Spanish and two are bilingual.

While many Latino residents are U.S. citizens, the social and familial ties mean the entire town is impacted when ICE pays a visit.

When Trump first took office in 2017, Gabriel S., who is Salvadoran, hoped the president’s pledge to build a border wall and launch a massive deportation program was merely escándalo—an improbable rumor. But when ICE raided the Sanford firearms manufacturer Bear Creek Arsenal in 2019, 30 people were held on suspicion of being undocumented—including Gabriel’s sister.

“They had my sister tied up in a bathroom for four hours,” he said in Spanish. Both Gabriel and his sister hold Temporary Protected Status, which is granted to immigrants from some countries that the U.S. government considers unsafe due to conflict or natural disasters. Because of this, his sister was ultimately released, but several of her coworkers were deported.

Marlon was in fifth grade when Trump first took office. In 2017, “ICE was doing its runs, raiding and arresting people,” he said. “And one of those people arrested was my dad.”

Police pulled over his father, who was undocumented, on his way to pick up Marlon’s uncle from work. When he could not provide a license, he was arrested and sent to a detention center. “I just get the call when I’m in school that my dad might not ever come back,” Marlon said. After five long months, his father was released. He now has a green card.

Trump’s swift actions in his second term, including Home Depot raids in California that were widely viewed on social media, set the local immigrant community on edge. Marlon knows other children whose parents have been detained while grocery shopping; he said many people worry about driving or even leaving their houses. “All in just seven months?” he asked in an interview in August. “And we still have three years left?”

Gabriel said that despite his legal status, he goes to work each day “con el Jesús en la boca,” an expression that describes his serious concern about whether he will arrive safely. 

Some residents wonder if they should even try to stay. Jazmin M., who left Mexico with her family as a child, was one of the first beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in North Carolina, which gave thousands of undocumented young people temporary protection from deportation. She and her siblings attended college, and the 31-year-old now works for a nonprofit in Chatham County.

Jazmin’s sister, though, recently returned to Mexico. She is married to an undocumented man, but they have two children with U.S. citizenship. DACA was never codified into law, and she worried about the logistics and trauma of a family separation if she and her husband were deported. Jazmin, whose husband is also undocumented, is now considering returning to Mexico as well.

“Do I give the power to the government to choose when for me to have my last day here?” she said. “Or do I make a plan to be able to be in my home country and prepare to relocate?”

Chilling Effect

The General Assembly passed two immigration-related bills this year, increasing tension in communities like Siler City.

Senate Bill 153, the North Carolina Border Protection Act, would increase cooperation between police and federal immigration officials, ensure that undocumented residents cannot receive state-funded health or housing benefits, and bar state universities from protecting students from federal immigration enforcement.

House Bill 318, the Criminal Illegal Alien Enforcement Act, requires local law enforcement to determine the citizenship or legal status of people charged with serious offenses like felonies and to hold people for an extra 48 hours if ICE has issued a detainer. 

Gov. Josh Stein vetoed both bills, but the legislature overrode him on the latter when a Democratic lawmaker joined Republicans to cast the decisive vote in the state House. “All cultures are not equal,” Rep. Carla Cunningham of Mecklenburg County said on the House floor. “It’s time to turn the conveyor belt off.” (The Senate voted to override Stein’s veto on SB153, but the House hasn’t held a vote.)

Chatham County Sheriff Mike Roberson said the new law is focused on people who have been detained for other crimes and won’t mean “deputies with blue lights coming to your house. You’ll hear otherwise out there sometimes, but it’s not right. This bill doesn’t do that.” 

Still, an explainer produced by his department recognizes the law’s “chilling effect” and its likelihood to “increase fear and mistrust in immigrant communities.”

One example of that heightened fear, Roberson said, is the community’s use of an app called Relaid to identify police checkpoints. On a typical day, Roberson said the app captures empty highways, parked police cars, or routine traffic stops—not actual checkpoints. “If every time you saw a cop somewhere, someone sends that text in, that just creates unnecessary fear in the community,” he said.

Roberson said one of the best ways to steer clear of ICE is for people who are undocumented— and therefore unable to obtain a license—to avoid driving. Though this can be challenging in a largely rural county like Chatham, he said being ticketed or arrested for driving without a license “puts you in the system. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get a detainer on you, but now your name’s out there.” 

At the same time, he advises residents to resist the urge to isolate. “Build relationships with local law enforcement,” he said. “Stay connected to advocacy groups … and contribute positively to your community.”

Patterson said local elected officials have been trying to help the community feel supported. The current town board has no Latino commissioners, although Franklin Gomez Flores, whose family is from Guatemala and who grew up in Siler City, became the first Latino elected to the Chatham County Board of Commissioners in 2020.

The Siler City Board of Commissioners and police department have agreed to participate in the FaithAction ID program, which provides identification cards to residents who can provide proof of identity and address but may not meet the requirements for a state-issued ID. In September, the mayor and town board issued a proclamation in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, urging Siler City residents to engage with and learn from the local Latino community. 

“We show our support for our neighbors and our friends and our community members and definitely just want to make everyone feel as safe as possible,” Patterson said.

At the Festejo on September 20, volunteers sold grilled chicken, tamales, horchata, and mango water under a tent in downtown Siler City. Others sold raffle tickets to win a hammock, tickets to Shakori Hills’ Grassroots Festival, or a raspberry-adorned chocoflan. 

The gathering was much smaller than the typical Fiesta, with about 600 attendees. But a sense of celebration endured. Children played with chalk and bubbles, and adults and teenagers danced to La Nueva Elegancia, Miguel Barajas, and Grupo Caribe Vibe, all North Carolina-based artists.

During a musical break, Dubester took the stage. “Right now, we are in a difficult moment,” she said in Spanish. “We stand against the criminalization of immigrants, ICE raids, and mass deportation.” 

“We believe that everyone deserves access to the opportunity to succeed in life,” Dubester said, including safe jobs with good wages, a path to citizenship, and in-state college tuition regardless of immigration status.

“We also believe,” she continued, “that everyone should have a driver’s license. Ya basta”—enough is enough.

‘Te Lo Pedimos, Señor’

When Gabriel arrived in North Carolina from El Salvador in 1998, the first thing he wanted to do was go to church. Even then, St. Julia Catholic Church overflowed with immigrant families at its 8 a.m. Spanish Mass. Gabriel wanted “to give thanks to God because I was here.”

Twenty-seven years later, Gabriel feels permanently settled in Siler City. His Temporary Protected Status has enabled him to work legally and raise a family, and his religious faith and church participation have continued to help him feel connected to the community. In 2001, St. Julia’s built a much larger cement-paneled church with, in the words of a document from the church’s archives, “a certain Latino characteristic and a bell tower over the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.” The church now serves more than 1,000 families, approximately 85 percent of which are Hispanic. 

“It’s more than worship,” said Friar Julio Alberto Martinez, the pastor at St. Julia. “It’s family coming together.”

St. Julia’s has also offered a space for dialogue between the Latino community and the sheriff’s department, with law enforcement officers visiting to reassure the congregation that they want to serve residents, not scare them. 

“Our sheriff’s office is big on relationships in the community,” Roberson said. “If you know me as Mike, you’re a lot more willing to talk to me than if you just know me as the sheriff.”

Martinez is grateful for the sheriff’s department’s rapport with the church. But he worries this may change as national and state immigration policies require greater participation from local law enforcement. “It’s a totally different world,” Martinez said. “And they find themselves in a very different type of situation now.”

On a recent Sunday morning, the church was crowded for its 8 a.m. Mass. Sunlight streamed through the windows, illuminating the wooden rafters and the dark pigtails of a little girl asleep on her mother’s lap. Martinez spoke a series of prayers to the congregation. After each prayer, the congregation responded, “Te lo pedimos, Señor”—We ask you, Lord.

“We pray also for our immigrant community,” Martinez said in Spanish. “Care for us. Protect us. Let us pray to the Lord.”

The congregation replied, in one voice, “Te lo pedimos, Señor.”

Sara Heise Graybeal is a Pittsboro native whose writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, HuffPost, TODAY, and elsewhere. She holds a master’s degree in fine art in creative writing from UNC-Greensboro and a master’s degree in folklore from UNC-Chapel Hill. She lives in Greensboro.