Amid threats of large-scale raids, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up in a quiet Hermitage subdivision Monday morning to make an arrest. Videos soon went viral of residents and local activists forming a human chain to protect their neighbor.
After about four hours, ICE backed down. But then the family packed up their things and rushed off, leaving behind a community in shock.
It was a humid summer morning, just before 11 a.m., and a crowd of neighbors and activists were standing side by side, hand in hand. Then, the family spilled out of a small brick house on the corner, carrying backpacks on their shoulders and trash bags in their hands. They pushed past TV cameras, piled into a line of cars and sped away.
“They went after a man and his son that never caused any problems in this neighborhood. They’d never caused no problems,” says Jacqueline Samspon. She and her husband have lived in Valley Grove, a working-class subdivision east of downtown, for 29 years, just a few houses down from the family.
Sampson says Valley Grove is close knit. Residents keep in touch through a community Facebook page and look out for one another. She and her husband even created a food pantry, where neighbors can donate or take groceries from two side-by-side cabinets along their fence.
Sampson doesn’t know which of her neighbors are citizens and which aren’t. She says she doesn’t ask.
“As long as they’re not causing problems, I let them be,” she says. And they, you know, they’re hungry, they come to the pantry. You know, we’re all God’s children.”
Attitudes about immigration in the neighborhood are mixed. When Sampson talks about immigration, she wavers. She thinks immigrant children ought to learn English in school.
“You know, they have to remember, this is America,” Sampson says.
And she definitely doesn’t have a problem with ICE officials cracking down on criminals who cross the border – the ‘bad people,’ as she calls them. But she couldn’t understand why agents would come to her neighborhood and try to detain a man who’s lived on her street for 14 years.
“Sure, they’re here illegally. But, are they causing any problems? Go after the ones that are causing the problems first, and then give these good people a chance, because, you know, they’re just trying to escape the bad that’s in their country,” she says.
For now, the man is largely anonymous. Neither local immigrants’ rights groups nor immigration officials will release the man’s name. Even Metro police say they don’t know who he is.
An ICE spokesperson says the man had several misdemeanor arrests and a DUI conviction in the past, that he received a deportation order almost a decade ago and that he’s been a fugitive ever since.
But residents say he’s a father of two, that he works long hours, that he always waves when they pass by and helps them cut their grass. They say he’s part of the Valley Grove family.
In a video released by a local advocacy group Thursday morning, the man thanked his neighbors for their support.
“Muchas gracias por toda la gente que me apoyó. Y por mis vecinos, muchas gracias, toda la gente,” he says, as a picture plays on the screen of his neighbors linked arms.
The man also advised other immigrants to know their rights.
With the Trump administration threatening raids, advocates have instructed immigrants not to comply with ICE officials unless they have an official warrant, signed by a judge. A lawyer at the scene Monday morning said agents couldn’t force the man out of his car, because they didn’t have the right paperwork on hand.
When residents saw an unfamiliar pickup truck blocking the father in his driveway at 6 a.m., they were already on edge. Just three months before, a 21-year-old had been
shot and killed on the same block.
Now, resident Stacey Farley keeps watch most days, looking out for anything suspicious from a folding chair in her front yard. The shooting put everyone on high alert, she says.
“And ever since that day, this neighborhood has been a community.”
Resident Arleen Christian says moments like these make Valley Grove closer. Christian just moved into the subdivision July 1. After the incident Monday, she says she’s proud of her neighbors.
“And when I saw that happening in the community, I just moved here, it makes me happy to live here” Christian says. “So, I’m glad to be a part of this community, especially the way I saw how they rallied around that family. That was awesome.”
But now the house on the corner sits empty. And though the man’s white van still sits in the driveway, his neighbors don’t know if he’ll come home to take his chances with ICE a second time.
Samantha Max is a
Report for America corps member.
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