In the Rio Grande Valley, two local business owners, who are legal U.S. permanent residents, were arrested and are being accused of concealing and harboring immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally.
Abby’s Bakery in Los Fresnos is a staple in the area, where customers say the owners were vibrant contributing members of the community. It’s located in Cameron County where, along with the rest of the Valley counties, Trump won reelection by several points.
Now, the immigration crackdown is testing support for Donald Trump.
Valerie Gonzalez, reporter for the Associated Press, spoke to Texas Standard about what happened. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us what happened at Abby’s Bakery.
Valeria Gonzalez: Well, Abby’s Bakery was visited twice by ICE and HSI to enforce immigration priorities by the administration. And that included looking into a tip that they received about employees who were working for the bakery.
Through their investigations and through their two visits, they conducted arrests – first of the employees and then of the owners after they admitted, according to the criminal affidavit, that they knew two of their employees were in the country illegally.
And so there went the charges, accused of concealing and harboring immigrants. How has the community responded? Tell us a little bit about that.
Well, the first reaction was shock. It wasn’t just in the arrests or in the accusations, but also in the way that the operation was carried out.
At least in the first instance, there was agents who showed up in plain clothes and with weapons and unmarked vehicles that sparked a lot of caution with the community. But some members were just visibly very scared – not only for themselves, but also because they didn’t know who it was.
I spoke to someone who was there and some people even thought that it was cartel-related, because along the border, not that it’s a very common thing, but on the Mexican side of the border it does happen. So that was kind of the first reaction – was shock.
And later as it developed, as the community started realizing the charges, there was still a disbelief. As one of the attorneys put it, this is not typical to arrest the owners for hiring people who are in the country legally. That normally is a civil penalty, where they have to pay fines.
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You noted in your story that this specific arrest may be showing some of the limits of support for President Trump in this area. Say more about that.
Yeah, Cameron County, last time that they voted for a Republican president was, I believe, back in 2004. So it’s been some time. This time they voted 52% in favor of Trump. Biden only got 46% in Cameron County. So a pretty big distinction.
And when I was visiting the bakery a couple times, you know, people showed their support for not only for the bakery, but also for the party and that seemed to also spark a lot of public outrage of, well, you know, “the president said he was going to go after the worst of the worst. These people, we know them. They’re not a threat to our community.”
So a lot of this has to do with the reputation of this particular bakery in the area, but it also seems like there’s a real pushback from some members of the community on how this was all handled.
Yes, correct. There was even protests a couple days after the arrest, and people spoke out for the bakery.
And even throughout that protest, where they were very public about their opposition to the administration and to the priorities on immigration, there were still people who were driving by the bakery who were just not necessarily interested about the protests. They wanted their baked goods, you know, they just wanted their pan dulce.
It really showed you that there’s deep roots to this bakery in this community that’s been there for over a decade.
