The Paletero’s Last Bell

They’re deporting the ice cream man. Let that melt in your mouth for a second.

Francisco Javier Duarte. Seven months in ICE detention. Ankle bracelet like he’s a criminal . His wife  is being deported too.  They are being deported. Three kids left behind—one at UCLA, one at Stanford .  One graduated.  A family torn apart by a administration that talks about family values.  But it seems ours families  do not count.

 He is the American dream in human form. Thirty years of ringing that bell through San Diego streets. Thirty years of taxes—more than many billionaires paid in taxes last year, by the way. Twenty-five years in the same house, same neighbourhood, same community. Working  every day serving all of us, serving our children. 

And his daughter made a video. Crying. Grateful. GRATEFUL. Even as they tear him from the only country his kids have ever known. A land that was Mexico before it was theirs to take.

He says  he’s grateful for the opportunities this country gave him, but I feel ashamed, ashamed of a country  that my family died  for and  paid for in blood and taxes, ashamed of its racism. I say it’s erasure. Every paletero deported is a summer memory deleted. A tía’s birthday party without raspados. A childhood without that bell. And the cool,  delicious ice cream it provided. 

We’re not losing an ice cream man. We’re losing us.

And I’m ashamed, ashamed that a hard-working family man is being deported,  his bell is a warning to us all of what we are losing, (beat)  we are losing ourselves . This is a story people need to  hear. Well  I’m ringing the ice cream  bell and warning us all we are losing what makes us American,  and that’s  immigrants  and  THE ONE THING America has always been great at making  and that is simply  more Americans.  the world used to need us and now we need the world to remind us not to forget what we do best  America  make   Americans.  God bless our immigrants and all our american stories

—In solidarity with Francisco Javier Duarte and every family torn apart by ICE and this administration