By Bean Gast, Staff Writer
No matter which winter holiday you celebrate, there’s one factor that is significant to all of them: sharing the celebration with family and friends. As a result of the rampant U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, this year will be drastically different. Hispanic residents are being plucked from their communities, shoved into unmarked vehicles, and being disappeared right before our eyes. Not only are families without their loved ones because of this, but their loved ones are locked away in detention facilities isolated from the warmth of Christmas cheer. And, if the detained individual isn’t being held in a facility, they have been deported without due process of law to a country where they may not have any family. If this isn’t ethnic cleansing, then I don’t know what is.
Throughout the year, I’ve watched as ICE has become more and more active in Knoxville and I couldn’t help but feel fearful of my community being torn apart. Unfortunately that became the reality when a dear friend and community advocate, Alejandro Guizar Lozano, was kidnapped and detained by ICE.
I first met Alejandro at a community action event and he was kind enough to allow me to interview him for a class project pertaining to his experience as an immigrant in America. In the interview, he described himself as a Southern Mexican guy who spoke Spanish while wearing cowboy boots and watched the Vols play football. Immediately I could tell Alejandro was a kind and genuine person, so it wasn’t long before we became friends.
He began attending poetry workshops that I co-organize and I got to know a more vulnerable side of him. The last time we hung out, we painted pumpkins while listening to music and gossiping about our lives. It felt like the perfect fall day, with a little bit of sun and a strong autumn breeze. Though this memory with Alejandro is beautiful, I refuse for it to be the last.
The next week, when Alejandro didn’t show up to the poetry reading, I knew something was wrong. When I grabbed my phone to text him, I saw I had an alarming amount of messages communicating that he had been detained by ICE earlier in the day. When I read these messages, I felt an overwhelming fear for Alejandro as I couldn’t imagine what he was going through.
The next morning, my adrenaline drove me to Putnam County Jail where he was being held; when I arrived, Representative Gloria Johnson was already there demanding answers. The jail was reluctant to provide us with clarity but, eventually, we learned that he was relocated at 3 a.m. Soon after, we were notified that he was already at an ICE detention facility in Louisiana; it is important to note that it took many people of the community working behind the scenes to find out where he was located. In less than 24 hours, Alejandro was detained, taken to two separate facilities, and flown to a third facility in Louisiana. Currently, he is located at the fourth facility – an ICE processing center in Jena, LA.
In an attempt to unite the community and tell Alejandro’s story, I organized (with the help of others) a pop up poetry event in Market Square. As it was such a last minute event, I was expecting only about five people to be present, but really around thirty to forty people showed up. Alejandro’s partner shared her poetry along with a poem that Alejandro wrote on the phone with her that morning. I was shocked that even without Alejandro there, his voice would be heard. This is Alejandro’s poem, written exactly one week after he was detained:
Looking to my left, I see a sea of family chosen and not. Love, life, and laughter fill the air.
My heart fills, my eyes mist! The joy the care is almost too much to bare
As I lean down to harvest, love manifested in the shape of two sunshine colored eggs covering an anthill of shimmering crisp chips bathing in my own salsa delivered by royal nature
THURUMP!! THURUMP!!
We hit a bump, and I’m awakened by a familiar but loathsome pain
My wrists and ankles an inch won’t gain
My heart fills, my eyes mist, joy is gone like a wisp like trying to hold water in cupped hands
Regret, resentment, rage, my soul binds
Like a child losing all emotional sobriety
I pull on my clanking restraints
Over, and over, and over, and over again
My heart and my fingers are numb by society
A society that promised me that
If I drove the right truck
Wore the right boots
Watched enough football
Had enough southern drawl
Everything would be alright
It was easier to believe the lie
I know society’s truth will make me cry
That I don’t contribute
That I am dispensable that
Knoxville isn’t my home
My heart is full of sadness
My eyes are misty with sorrow
I think of all the time I spent in wallow
And from my memories I borrow
Mesmerizing memories marking that life has been good
Mesmerizing memories marking that my dream is no fantasy
Mesmerizing memories marking that I can see
indeed see a sea of family chosen and not strangers and friends
Laughter, life, love, and the spirit of justice and Freedom fill my heart. My eyes mist once more as I use all of your collective love and energy to dispel the lie
Dispel the lie that Knoxville is not the place I love
that
Knoxville is not my home
Alejandro has lived in Knoxville longer than I’ve been alive. He went to Rocky Hill Middle School and Hardin Valley Highschool, and was even a student here at Pellissippi State Community College. It is painful to see him ripped from our community so abruptly.
In response to his detainment, Alejandro has filed a habeas corpus, claiming that he was targeted by ICE due to the fact that he is a prominent advocate for immigrant rights. It is expected he will still be detained for months.
In a pursuit to remain friends with Alejandro, I wrote him a long letter telling him so many details about my week it would be as if he was here experiencing it with me. I also shared some deep dark secrets to make him feel close despite being so far away.
I recently got the opportunity to speak with him on the detention center phone for 45 minutes and I savored every moment of it. He made sure to balance out my vulnerability by sharing some of his personal secrets, so it became a fun game of one-upping each other. He also spoke about the process of detainment and relocation, his fellow detainees, and how he is feeling. He told me that there were 29 others who were transported with him and, during the entire process, they were chained up by their ankles and wrists. He added that they all prayed together because they had no idea what atrocities could happen. When I asked what he missed most, he responded saying,
“I just miss being able to be there for people that matter to me. I can help people who are in here and they matter to me now, but really I want to be there for the people I love.”
Many people in his position feel this way and it’s important to recognize that it’s more than just Alejandro, it’s thousands of people being kidnapped in broad daylight and detained/deported. In order to get more information on this topic, I reached out to an expert: Meghan Conley.
Conley is the co-founder and steering committee member of Allies of Knoxville’s Immigrant Neighbors (AKIN), as well as an associate professor of practice and researcher at the University of Tennessee, with a specific focus in criminalization of immigrants. Conley has also known Alejandro since 2011, as they worked alongside each other in the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition. She expressed to me that,
“We’ve never seen this many immigration detainees come through the Knox County Jail. September was the highest month ever, close to 460 detainees in one month, compared to during much of the Biden administration, where it was maybe around 20 per month. So it escalated quite dramatically.”
Not only has it escalated, but the scope of who is being detained has widened drastically. Meaning, residents who have social security numbers, green cards, a state-issued driver’s license, a work authorization card, or pending asylum applications are all being detained or deported.
People are being disappeared from their communities and are transported so rapidly that family members are unable to locate them. There is an ICE detainee locator that, very conveniently, does not get updated, making it even harder to track detainees. In response to this, Conley focuses on tracking transport patterns throughout Tennessee and helping community members locate their loved ones. She went on to say,
“It’s really about making the invisible visible, helping to understand how this process works so they can find their loved ones. It takes an extensive network of connections to be able to find out where your loved one is. And you should not need to have a PhD, to be well connected, or to have an extensive community, for people to know where you are.”
It is very often that Conley receives calls from folks in search of their loved ones, many not knowing where they are or if they’ve been deported from the country. And, without ICE following due process, it is evident that the detainment and deportation process has exponentially accelerated.
We are in a constant battle with ICE as they work to dismantle the community, disappearing human beings and separating families. The solution to this: build OUR community stronger. There’s many ways you can get involved – whether that’s through simply conversing about immigration or attending AKIN meetings – every contribution is worth it.
Personally, I find hope from the trees. It is very difficult for humans to fully uproot a tree, only mother nature has the power to do that. So, even as we see trees being cut down in our community and land being deforested, just know the roots are still there. The government may be cutting down trees, but they do not have the power to uproot Hispanic communities.
