At noon Tuesday, faith leaders and community members gathered in front of the Homeland Security office in Blue Ash to call for the release of Alonzo Tomas Mendez on bond. Mendez was detained during the immigration raids in East Price Hill on May 31; he was stopping at the Warsaw Avenue Kroger for birthday party supplies when ICE stopped him in the parking lot, advocates told CityBeat. He has since been held at the Butler County Jail and is awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, according to a press release.
The press conference was hosted by the advocacy organizations Ignite Peace, Cincinnati UNDIVIDED and the Ola Immigrant Welcome Center. A crowd of about 30 people gathered to listen to local pastors and faith leaders speak about Mendez and other immigrants who have been arrested in President Donald Trump’s “largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” But, according to Walter Vasquez, a faith leader in Price Hill and the director of Hispanic/Latino outreach for Bloc Ministries, Mendez has no criminal history.
“Let’s stop labeling people as criminals when they are just simple, humble, hard-working people,” said Vasquez. “They are here to solve some of the brokenness of our neighborhoods, the lack of family structure, the lack of hard-working people to do [labor] and the people of faith. So don’t be afraid of them. They are here to do good things.”
Mendez is a devout Christian whose only goal is to support his family and “to love God with all his heart,” according to Vasquez.
The crowd included Georgia, who did not wish to provide her last name, a mother of five who brought her baby and oldest child to the press conference. She said it’s important for her kids to understand what is happening to kids who might be in their own class at school.
“I just was telling my daughter, like, just imagine if your dad wasn’t able to come home one day, you know, just how scary that would be,” Georgia said.
As a foster parent, Georgia has seen what it’s like for a child to lose a parent.
“It’s really scary and it’s a lot of trauma that will stick with them for the rest of their life,” she said. “It’s just something that I don’t want kids to experience.”
If Mendez is released on bond, that means that he would be able to return to his wife and two young children while pursuing his immigration case from home.
“As Christians and as Americans, let’s not allow mothers and fathers to suddenly disappear, to be vanished away by men in black masks, with no opportunity to defend themselves according to the law,” said Dave Workman, a former pastor at the Vineyard Community Church. “I believe that, in the end, a nation will be judged not by its power, but rather by its mercy.”
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This article appears in Jun 11-24, 2025.