This story is part of CityBeat’s “ICE Age” series about the Trump administration’s crackdown on community members who are undocumented.
East Price Hill has been quiet since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers arrested four men in the Warsaw Avenue Kroger parking lot on Saturday, May 31.
“If you’re white, they’re not going to stop you, but if you’re brown?” said Walter Vasquez, director of Hispanic/Latino outreach for Bloc Ministries. “It doesn’t matter if you are a citizen or if you are not, you are being a target, thinking that they might be undocumented.”
The arrests were part of a “targeted operation,” according to an ICE spokesperson. President Donald Trump has charged The Department of Homeland Security with carrying out “the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America,” but Vasquez said Alonzo Mendez is no criminal – he was just stopping at Kroger to get supplies for a birthday party. Like those arrested, Vasquez was stopping by this Kroger on that very morning out of happenstance.
“This beautiful family — it’s really a simple, humble, beautiful family that I know — they were going to a birthday party that would happen at 9 a.m. for a relative,” Vasquez said. “And the relative called them and said, ‘We are short of some items, would you stop at Kroger?’ So that’s when they stopped at Kroger. And then [Mendez] left the car and he said, ‘I’ll be right back. I won’t take a long time.’ So his family stayed in the car.”
Vasquez said Mendez’s wife and two young daughters watched as men dressed in tactical gear stopped her husband as he approached the store entrance. His wife remained in the car, quiet and scared. Then the men approached her car.
“Two guys came to their car and they tried to open the door, and she did not open the door. They told her to open the door, many times, and she did not move. She was, of course, shocked, so they go back to Alonzo — the guy who was arrested — and they took their keys from him. So the officers themselves opened the car, and that’s when they came to question the woman. They told her, ‘Give us all you know, give us your information,’ and she says she remained silent until the fourth attempt. They told her, ‘If you don’t collaborate, we are going to arrest you, too. We are going to take you.’ So that’s when she said her name and the information.”
Vasquez said the woman told him the agents then took her fingerprints and her photo right there in the parking lot. He suspects they were using the information to look up any outstanding warrants for the mom, which yielded nothing. ICE declined to answer CityBeat’s questions about this arrest or any others carried out in the Warsaw Avenue Kroger parking lot, but a spokesperson for the agency said two of those arrested “had criminal history to include DUI and public intoxication,” and that “all four were illegally present in the United States.”
CityBeat could not find any prior criminal charges of any kind against Alonzo Mendez. Vasquez said he knows the father of three to be a “simple, humble man.”
“He’s a church man, he’s a good man, he’s a simple, humble man who I’ve known because of the community,” Vasquez said. “It’s a scary scenario for this family to now be separated, but not know what’s going to happen.”
On Sunday, June 8 at 6 p.m., the Miami Valley Immigration Coalition and Cincinnati Socialists will hold a rally outside the Butler County Jail at 705 Hanover St. in Hamilton, Ohio.
The Butler County Jail currently holds hundreds of detained ICE prisoners, including the men arrested outside the East Price Hill Kroger on May 31.
“This event not only protests the harms inflicted on our community by ICE, but also provides space for sharing stories of local impact and also educating the public on the many human and civil rights abuses during the recent ICE detentions around the country and Butler County Jail’s role in profiting off of their detainment and misery,” reads a press release.
ICE set a record on June 3 with more than 2,200 arrests in a single day, according to the agency. This comes as senior ICE officials urged officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11” by arresting “collaterals.” These are undocumented immigrants they encounter while serving arrest warrants for others, according to internal agency emails viewed by The Guardian.
U.S. Representative Greg Landsman (D-OH) told CityBeat this level of enforcement isn’t reflective of what Americans want.
“Most people wanted border security and immigration reform, not the chaos and cruelty we’ve seen so far,” Landsman said. “There’s bipartisan support to hire more judges, but they seem to be okay defying court orders and the Constitution. It’s frustrating because of what it’s doing to our communities, but also because there is bipartisan support for real reform and the kind of action that will solve our border and immigration issues.”
Vasquez sees the recent shift in enforcement tactics as more than just an arrest quota: it’s a message.
“They are not going to look for people because they committed a crime,” Vasquez said. “They are just trying to bring more fear and scare the community.”
And it’s working. The arrests at the Warsaw Kroger have sent a chill down the spines of immigrants living in Price Hill, causing many to stop moving about their lives and retreat into their homes for fear they may be next in handcuffs.
With the help of translator Ana Maria of the Cincinnati Language Services Cooperative, CityBeat spoke with business owners along Warsaw Avenue. The businesses were different — a barber shop, a restaurant, two grocery stores — but the message was the same: anxiety is high and business is down.
A walk down Warsaw
David Lopez works at Latinos Barber Shop across the street from the Warsaw Kroger. The shop is normally packed with men waiting for their turn in the barber chair. On June 4, only two customers were inside.
“Not a lot of people came into here Sunday — Monday as well. Not a lot of people came in,” he said. “Everybody’s staying home. I can imagine from like, all the group chats and the talks in the community, and everyone’s still afraid of leaving and getting caught as well.”
Lopez has lived in the neighborhood for more than 10 years. He said the community feels “terrorized” by the weekend’s arrests and wishes people could return to normal life.
“[Don’t] be afraid to go out. Not everyone has had issues with the law in terms of DUIs and things like that,” he said. “The Latino community here, being here over 10 years, there’s never been any issues. If anything, it’s been with the American community that we’ve had issues, but not within the Latino community, there’s never been any problems.”
Down the street is Restaurante y Taquería Valle Verde, a colorful restaurant with a full bar serving street-style tacos, sopas, menudo and more. During CityBeat’s visit, customers populated about a quarter of the available seating. Gelin Blanco works front-of-house at the restaurant. She was taking to-go orders from behind the bar when she spoke to CityBeat about the neighborhood vibe shift following the arrests.
“It’s definitely a little strange mixed in with a little fear,” she told CityBeat through our translator. “That was such a surprise that something like that could happen.”
Like Latinos Barber Shop, she sees a void previously filled by immigrant customers after the arrests.
“There’s a lot of people in the area, like Latinos of all different communities,” she said. “A lot of them come to the restaurant, and with everything going on, that number has diminished because they’re afraid to come out here and get food. And that’s a large part of the people that come here.”
A neighborhood of immigrants
Nancy Sullivan is the director of Transformations CDC, a small organization working with and for immigrants in Price Hill and beyond. She said the neighborhood has a long, rich history for immigrants.
“It’s an area which, for generations, has attracted immigrants because of some formerly affordable housing; it is a very mixed neighborhood,” Nancy said. “There are very old German Price Hill families that are still here, but over generations, they have been Italians, Greeks, they’ve been Irish. I mean, the St. Joseph Cemetery on West 8th Street has the German side and the Irish side. During or right after the Vietnam War, Catholic Charities settled a lot of Vietnamese refugees around the couple of local Catholic churches, so there was a Little Saigon here for a while.”
In more recent decades, Sullivan said most immigrants settling in Price Hill have been from Guatemala.
“Almost all the Guatemalans were here from the same [area of Guatemala],” she said. “There are, depending on whom you speak to, 24-25 different Mayan dialects. So virtually all the people here speak one of those dialects, which is Mam. And people have a lot of family ties here, even though they haven’t been here for very long.”
According to a 2020 study from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, nearly 20 percent of over 3,100 interviewees migrating in family units from Guatemala identified violence — including death threats, extortion, gang recruitment and domestic violence — as the main reason behind their decision to leave their communities.
Sullivan was attempting to document ICE arrests in another part of Price Hill on May 31 — she also connected with family members of those who were arrested in the Kroger parking lot. She said she spoke to the brother of one of the men who was arrested in the Kroger parking lot; his family left Guatemala to escape targeted death threats.
“They have another brother who was detained in Georgia, and they have stronger-than-most asylum cases because of their grandfather,” Sullivan said. “The man’s father was murdered when he refused to let robbers into a factory, and when they denounced the killers who got out on bond and did not go back to court, they said, ‘We’re going to kill everybody in your family for denouncing us.’”
The fear of being deported back to a country that may be unfamiliar or unsafe is enough to make people think twice about shopping or eating out, said Vasquez, who also lives in the neighborhood.
“That is affecting the livelihood of people,” he said. “That is affecting the livelihood of kids who are U.S. citizens, who are afraid of what would happen to mom.”
Grocery sales dip
Diagonal to Restaurante y Taquería Valle Verde is one of several Guatemex Supermercado locations — a local Hispanic-owned convenience store chain, according to the Cincinnati Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The store had just one customer inside when CityBeat spoke with two men behind the counter — one declined to share his name and one introduced himself as Egner.
“They didn’t really see anything,” Maria translated for CityBeat. “He did hear about some people that were caught over at that restaurant.”
Maria pointed across the street to El Sabor De Mi Tierra, a restaurant sitting on the corner of Warsaw Avenue and St. Lawrence Avenue. CityBeat tried to speak with the front-of-house employees at El Sabor De Mi Tierra, but they declined. The restaurant was empty during lunchtime.
Inside Guatemex, Egner said the grocery store is also seeing far fewer customers.
“People are afraid to leave since Saturday,” he said. “People are afraid to go outside, to leave their house. Usually it’s very lively here — especially Saturday, Sunday — but since Saturday, it’s been pretty quiet.”
Egner thinks it will take time for customers to feel safe leaving their homes and returning to local businesses; it all depends on ICE.
“So as long as the deportations continue, people are going to continue being afraid of coming [into the store], not knowing if ICE is going to show up and take them. Just like that Saturday, they had no idea that [ICE] was going to show up,” he said.
One employee at another local Hispanic grocery store spoke with CityBeat on the condition of anonymity — he also didn’t want the name of his store published.
“They are nervous, especially everyone here, being Latino, everyone is an immigrant,” Maria interpreted for CityBeat. “Like, they’re just here to find a way forward for their family, to help their family.”
That way forward, the financial side of feeding their family, feels less certain after the arrests at Kroger. Like every immigrant-owned business CityBeat interviewed, this grocery store is uncharacteristically quiet.
“To be honest, it has slowed down greatly since it’s happened,” the man said. “Business has been down. And of course, our people, they’re gonna be scared, not wanting to come outside.”
Shelves with rows of brightly colored snacks, home supplies and toys sit fully stocked, awaiting untouched baskets. A butcher behind the counter waits to commiserate with regulars not seen in days. While everyone in this store speaks Spanish, the clerk told CityBeat that everyone — no matter their race — is welcome to shop and fill the business gap.
“They would ask for everyone to come and support,” Maria interpreted for CityBeat. “There’s no, I would say, prejudice against anyone of any kind; American or not, everyone’s welcome here. All are welcome to come in here and support.”
Beyond shopping at Hispanic-owned businesses, Vasquez offered another piece of advice for people who want to be there for the immigrant community.
“Be a good neighbor; take care of each other,” he said. “We have an expression in Spanish, and it says, ‘Hoy por ti, mañana por mí.’ Which means, ‘Maybe today is for me, but tomorrow might be for you.’ So we want to come and support each other. Because at the end of the day, there are games and plays from politicians; they will be gone, but we stay together as a community.”
Follow CityBeat’s staff news writer Madeline Fening on Instagram. Got a news tip? Email mfening@citybeat.com.
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This article appears in Nov 17-22, 1994.