Luis Ixchop and his partner, Abigail Coronado, were out doing food deliveries early on Thanksgiving morning. It was around 6:30am when they stopped at a local donut shop. As they pulled out of the shopping area, federal agents pulled them over.
Seven ICE agents surrounded the car.
Abby has a green card, and told the officers so, but she had forgotten her bag. They told her to get out, and when she didn’t move fast enough for their liking they grabbed her and yanked her out, twisting her knee hard enough that it cracked. She told them hold on, you’re hurting me, I’m trying to get out.
“Oh well. You need to get out,” the ICE agent said.
The ICE agents didn’t, of course, have a warrant. Luis has no criminal record… just a years old DUI.
They arrested Luis and Abby and put them in their vehicles and drove a short distance away, parking behind a building.
They were quickly able to see that Abby did have a green card, and agreed to let her go. Luis, however, they’d be taking away. Abby begged them to let her hug her partner of ten years goodbye, and they finally allowed it.
But as she walked away, the agents started laughing and one of them called after her, “Happy Thanksgiving!”
Abby turned around and said, “How is that going to be a happy Thanksgiving? How is that ... you’re taking my other half. You’re breaking us apart.” The agents didn’t respond, they just loaded up and left.
The town they were arrested in — Vancouver, Washington — is my town. Abby and I have mutual friends, and we’ve been sending notes to one another. I asked her how things have been going since Luis was taken on Thanksgiving.
She said that the kids — they have three children — are “heartbroken thinking that he might not be here with us for Christmas. Our first time being apart… and first Christmas not celebrating together as a whole family.”
Luis has a court date on December 16th, and Abby has had to make a horrible choice: without Luis’s income they can’t afford both a lawyer and their apartment. So they’re moving out of their home in the hopes that maybe a lawyer can bring them all together again. They’ve started a fundraiser, but it’s hard to get attention in the midst of everything else going on.
I’ll repeat again: these are people in my community, and we have mutual friends.
They aren’t criminals.
They aren’t “the worst of the worst.”
Prioritizing the arrest of people like Luis — a hardworking family man who pays taxes, who takes care of other people, who has strong family ties in the neighborhood — is senseless and cruel.
Speaking of cruelty, arresting Luis on a holiday, and then making jokes about it to his partner is a good reminder of how ICE agents are being corrupted by the horrific things they are being encouraged to do in recent months. They have to build a narrative that they are doing something good or noble or even something that the average person wants, when in reality they are not doing any of those things.
Only 5% of people taken into ICE custody have a conviction for violence. 73% have no conviction *of any kind*.
Judges are increasingly saying that both the warrantless arrests (like Luis’s) and the continued holding of people without due process is illegal.
Meanwhile, immigration authorities are doing a sort of national tour of different locations, making a big show for a couple weeks at a time before moving on to the next city. It’s gross and embarrassing.
Cities are starting to declare a state of emergency… not because they are being overrun by immigrants, but because the federal government is invading their towns and illegally grabbing their citizens. Here locally, for example, we have Salem, Cornelius, Woodburn, Hillsboro, Washington County.
And the fallout from these illegal arrests is an economic and humanitarian crisis. Our leadership wants to push it further: we’re pausing all asylum decisions, “re-examining” green cards, and even pausing the citizenship ceremonies for people who have already passed every background check, every test, every single thing we’ve asked them to do to come to the US legally.
This slipshod, careless, cruel and illegal approach to dealing with our broken immigration system comes with a human cost.
Families like Luis’s not only have an empty chair at Thanksgiving, but now the kids are dealing with the emotional fallout. His mom, his sister, his partner. His family is losing their apartment.
Luis had to be hospitalized after his arrest because of his high blood pressure… he’s had a stroke in the past.
All of these things were avoidable. All of this — including immigration enforcement! — could be done in a way that is legal, reasonable, and certainly without cruel joking at the expense of his family.
This is the United States of America, where we celebrate the holidays by arresting a husband and father and taking him away from his family. Where we laugh at his partner as she walks away to move her kids out of their home so they can afford a lawyer. Don’t close your eyes.
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GoFundMe for Luis and his family. I know many people are looking for places to be generous at the holidays. I can tell you personally that is a family that is truly in need.
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