I've been helping cover President Trump's mass deportation campaign for NPR since it began. But in that time, I had yet to witness immigration agents out in public making an arrest. Until Tuesday, when they came for my favorite neighborhood fruit vendor.
I love sliced fruit, and for seven years, my go-to vendor has been a man named Jesús. I could always find him under two large, rainbow umbrellas next to a gas station in my Los Angeles neighborhood, Echo Park.
I visited him two or three times a week whenever I was in town. The plate of sliced mango, pineapple, watermelon and coconut he sold me was always perfect. I once asked him how he did it, and he told me it was because he would not slice fruit even a day underripe or a day overripe.
"Quality is number one," he told me. "Quality is how you keep or lose a customer."
And he was right. It's why I rarely bought from anyone but him.
Jesús was undocumented, so recently, he'd been taking more days off. He feared the ICE and Border Patrol agents who've been roving L.A.'s streets since last summer, rounding people up. Every time I drove by and didn't see him on his corner, the thought entered my mind: Had he been taken?
But when I drove by on Tuesday, there he was, sitting under his rainbow umbrellas, in a folding chair, scanning the street for signs of immigration agents. He greeted me with a big, mustached smile.
"I didn't see you yesterday," I told him in Spanish.
"Ha habido mucha migra," he replied. There've been a lot of immigration agents around.
He sliced up my order and topped it with a squirt of lemon and a sprinkle of Tajín chili powder, the way he knew I liked it. I paid him, told him to take care, and got back into my car.
And that's when I heard a scuffle. Two large, dark SUVs had rolled up, and I saw masked agents in Border Patrol vests chasing Jesus out from under his rainbow umbrella and across the gas station. He ran between the pumps. That's where they grabbed and handcuffed him, still wearing his black apron.
I got out of the car and started to film. I realized that after all these years as his customer, I knew Jesús' hometown in Mexico, his birthday, that he had no family in Los Angeles, but not his last name. As the agents hurried him into an SUV, I shouted out to ask him.
"Jesús, your last name!"
"Jesús González!" he shouted back.
Two women who'd been pumping gas joined me in recording him as the agents led Jesús away. We shouted for Jesús' phone number.
But they pushed him inside the SUV and sped off. It all happened so fast. It was over in about a minute. We stood there in shock. I walked over to Jesús González's abandoned fruit cart.
Within minutes, several activists showed up. They were with a group that tracks ICE operations in Echo Park, and they told me a witness had reported it to a rapid response phone number. As word spread, customers and friends of Jesús' started showing up, too.
One of them took down the rainbow umbrellas, packed up the fruit cart and moved it to a corner of the gas station so it could be picked up later. Its glass case was still brimming with fresh cantaloupe, mango and pineapple packed on ice.
Jorge Mejía, a longtime customer, told me he rushed over when he heard. He told me things I already knew – that Jesús cared about his customers and about quality, and that's why people loved him.
"I feel helpless," Mejía said, his eyes filling with tears, his voice breaking. "It angers me that this is happening to people just working and trying to get ahead."
Ariel Padilla met Jesús on the day Padilla moved into the neighborhood a decade ago. It was a hot day and the cold fruit hit just right. Last summer, Padilla organized a fundraiser for Jesús when sales were slow because many of his immigrant customers were too afraid to go outside.
"He was a landmark of this part of the neighborhood," Padilla told me after he rushed over when he heard the news. "Now I'm trying to think about: how can I help him?"
The next morning I learned, from Padilla, that Jesús had already been removed to Tijuana, Mexico. He had agreed to be deported because he feared languishing for months in LA's notorious immigration detention center.
Since his arrest, I've driven by his corner and struggled to make sense of the fact that someone who brought so much simple joy to my neighborhood for almost 20 years had been whisked away before my eyes. That every time I pass I'll picture that scene. And that that corner will never be the same.
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