Leonardo Baez and Nora Avila-Guel Bakery in the Los Fresnos Texas community is a daily stop for many inhabitants to share coffee gossip and pick up cakes and pastries for birthdays, office parties or themselves.
When in February appeared in Abby's Bakery Agents for Investigation of Internal Security and arrested the owner and eight employees, the inhabitants of Los Fresnos were shocked.
However, owners of the bakery, Baez and Avila-Guel, a Mexican couple who are legal American permanent residents, could lose everything after being accused of hiding and inability of immigrants who were illegally in the US. It is a rare case in which business owners face criminal accusations rather than just a fine.
“I was surprised because I know they don't use people,” said Esteban Rodriguez, 43, after he reached out in the bakery parking lot to find out he was closed. “It was more like helping people. They had nowhere to go instead of being on the streets.”
Reaction in the city 8,500 inhabitants can show the limits of support for President Donald TrumpimmigrationThe procedure in the majority Hispanic region dotted with cotton, sugar cane and red grapefruit, where the Republicans won last year's elections. Cameron County voted for President GOP for the first time since 2004. For the neighboring Starr Region it wasFor the first time since 1896.
Los Fresnos, which is 90% Latino and calculates the school district as its largest employer, is about half an hour's driving from the American Mexican border. Hundreds of drivers of school buses, painters, pensioners and parishioners from the nearby Catholic church come to Abby Bakery every day. Customers with silver tanks and pliers choose pastries from glass door cabinets.
Owners had green cards but employees don't
Six out of eight employees of ABBY were on visa visas in the US, but none of them had a work permit when agents of the investigation of internal security came into business 12 February. The owners acknowledged that they knew it, according to a federal complaint.
Employees lived in a room with six beds and shared two bathrooms in the same building as a bakery, according to an affidavit agent.
Baez, 55, and Avila-Guel, 46, confessed that they did not blame. They broke questions to their lawyers who noticed that workers were not held against their will and did not try to hide their presence as if the smuggler.
Like green card holders, a couple could deport if they were convicted. They have five children who are US citizens.
The bakery closed several days after their arrest and attracted about 20 people to protest against atypically cold evening.
Monsignor Pedro Briseño from the Church of St. Cecilia often visited before the morning mass for Campecan, scaly, crunchy dough, laminated with caramelized sugar. His routine was interrupted when immigration agents for ordinary laundry arrived in unmarked vehicles.
“The woman cries here. She said,” Father, Father, taking my brother, “Briseño said. The priest passed and saw the agents to use ties to zipper to bind the hands of employees.
The deportation support has limits
According to an, the stunning bipartisan support is deporting people who are illegally in the US and have been convicted of violent crime, with 82% in favorAssociated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research Pollin January. Support greatly softens the deportation of all people in the country illegally, with 43% in favor and 37% against.
Trump and the best helpers repeatedly emphasize that they deport criminals. But as often says homan, others in a country illegally who are there when officers arrest criminalsWill also be deportedDepart from Biden management practices.
Trump has so far avoided extensivefactory and office raidsThis characterized his first term and term of the Republican President George W. Bush. Among the scattered reports of smaller operations were recent arrests 37 people on aRoofing in the state of northern Washington.
ICE says he carried out 32,809 arrests in the first 50 days of Trump in the office or daily average of 656, which compared to the daily average of 311 during the 12 -month period ending on 30 September. ICE said that almost half (14 111) was convicted of criminals and almost one third (9,980) had the waiting criminal charges.
People with deep ties in their communities and without criminal records tend to create more compassion.
The bakery is the Los Fresnos clip
Abby reopened after the owners were released to Bond.
Chela and Alicia Vega, two sisters at their 60s, who left the school district and knew the owners of bakeries for years, were among the customers who filled the bread containers. Chela Vega said the couple had taken a week off from work to take them to San Luis Potosi in Mexico after their sister died. When he hit a hurricane, Leonardo Baez reduced damaged trees without charges.
For Terri Sponsler, 61, shopping in Abby's is nowstatement. “With everything that is happening in our country, we have to find ways to protest,” she said.
Mark W. Milum, manager of Los Freznos, said that Abby's is an important enterprise that contributes to the intake of real estate tax and turnover tax to the annual budget of $ 13 million.
Some customers simply love products.
“Other bakeries will appear, right?” said Ruth Zamora, 65. “But when you go there, it's not the same.”
This story was originally listed on Fortune.com
