What Our Hearts Know About ICE

 A collection of poems that reflect the lived experience of Latinx families impacted by ICE.

Last month, I attended a Latinx Affinity Conference at Crossroads School hosted by the Los Angeles Independent School Latinx Affinity, LA ISLA. I met Latinx students from independent schools all across Los Angeles as we gathered to reflect on our identities and the realities our communities continue to face. During one of the sessions, we read and discussed resistance poems written by Latinx poets on their experiences with ICE. The poems were beautifully written, carrying both the fear that shadows so many of our families, and the courage that has carried our community through generations. I wanted to share some of these poems here, in hopes that others can sit with them too and understand the weight and truth they hold.

And Though the Storm Rages On

by Jean-Pierre Rueda

Los Angeles hums a different song these days,

a nervous tremor beneath the worn shoes

of abuelitas walking to the bus stop,

hands clutching rosaries, shopping bags

full of tortillas and sueños

The murals still speak

of arms that lifted history,

etching life in vivid hues

but the paint feels thinner now,

like the air when the sirens wail.

Kids play soccer in dusty parks,

their laughter catching on the wind,

un cometa delicado in a shifting sky.

Nuestras ciudades, quienes han estado aquí since before we were born,

now watch the news with a tightness

en su pecho.

Diciendo, mijo, it’s like the old days,

but the old days were just stories

we told over carne asada.

Now they’re knocking on doors again.

The panadería smells of sweet bread and fear.

Everyone knows someone,

or knows someone who knows someone, whose knows someone

whose primo, whose neighbor, whose brother

just disappeared into the back of a van, with their dreams handcuffed

to las manos frías de la injusticia.

Su ausencia, un nuevo tipo de eco

in the crowded streets of this country

that promised so much. Delivered so little.

From bustling businesses to backyard barbecues,

whispers wander, wary, weighted with woe.

A somber shadow sweeps through the sun-kissed streets,

where families found freedom’s faint gleam.

El pulso del barrio, pleno, palpita preocupado,

pues peligros punzantes, provocan profundo pesar, cada ocaso opaco

Mothers mourn missing men, their memories marred,

masked men in unmarked vehicles snatching people without warrants,

siguiendo ciegamente al jester, joke of a presidente.

El futuro frágil, fraught with fright,

familias fracturadas por redadas

But even in the deepest shadows,

en los momentos más grises, más oscuros

the light finds a crack.

It’s in the shared poems of this night,

It’s in the shared music of this night,

the whispered prayers in crowded churches,

the hands reaching across community centers

ofreciendo una taza de aliento, a word of comfort,

en la gente ordinaria turning into journalists with TikTok

in the middle of a redada

para que el mundo no vea, so it never forgets

It’s in the young ones, nacidos aquí,

their Spanglish a new kind of music,

who carry the stories of their elders

but also build their own bridges.

They learn the law, they organize,

their voices rising, clear and strong,

demanding to be heard, to be seen.

This city, built on layers of longing

and the sweat of a thousand different suns,

it remembers what it means to struggle,

and it remembers what it means to rise.

Las raíces aquí run deep, tangled and tough,

and though the storm rages on,

las semillas of are already planted,

ready to push through these difficult times,

to bloom in defiance,

a brighter future,

unbroken,

unbowed.

poem where no one is deported

by José Olivarez

now i like to imagine la migra running

into the sock factory where my mom

& her friends worked. it was all women

who worked there. women who braided

each other’s hair during breaks.

women who wore rosaries, & never 

had a hair out of place. women who were ready

for cameras or for God, who ended all their sentences

with si dios quiere. as in: the day before 

the immigration raid when the rumor

of a raid was passed around like bread

& the women made plans, si dios quiere.

so when the immigration officers arrived

they found boxes of socks & all the women absent.

safe at home. those officers thought

no one was working. they were wrong.

the women would say it was god working.

& it was god, but the god 

my mom taught us to fear

was vengeful. he might have wet his thumb

& wiped la migra out of this world like a smudge

on a mirror. this god was the god that woke me up

at 7am every day for school to let me know

there was food in the fridge for me & my brothers.

i never asked my mom where the food came from,

but she told me anyway: gracias a dios.

gracias a dios del chisme, who heard all la migra’s plans

& whispered them into the right ears

to keep our families safe.

Fingerprints on Tortillas 

by Luivette Resto

Before mouths agape into a yawn

and eyes squint at the sun’s strength,

Cielo mixes the masa harina con agua 

rolling them evenly into twelve balls

petite, five inch hands pressing them flatter

than any tortilla maker sold in the marquetas

after that it was the silent relationship

between her fingers and the comal.

How come she never winced or said hijo’le when she flipped them?

Her culinary talents

preceded her at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

We can’t get a clear fingerprint, Mrs. Castro.

They seemed to be burned off.

Rubbing her fingers together

Cielo spoke about the comal

like a Borges novel.

How she tempered it

not by the numbers on the knobs

but by ojo like bisabuela Gertrudiz taught her

watching the tri-color flames hover over the gas grate

like the celestial glory prophesied in Bibles,

Hugging the bottom of the cast iron

with its blue, purple, and white fingers.

This was her sunrise ritual

in satisfying six appetites

with refrigerated butter

con un poco de sal.

Does this ruin my chances?

No, Mrs. Castro. We will find a way.

Let me try one more time.

Know Your Rights When ICE Comes to Your Door

by Christian Aldana

They will come to the door in broad daylight. Because they can.

When the sun is high and shining, and Chicago summer feels like it will never end

They will wait in the street.

They will knock.

Even if your conviction is yellowing with age and you have already repented for the sins America has stitched into your skin.

They will ask who is home.

Even if you have proof. A stamp. A slip of paper that says you have permission to reside on this soil permanently.

They will lie.

Pretend to be police officers. Say they just need some help with an ongoing investigation. They will say they have a warrant.

Even if all you can be guilty of is existing without proper government “permissions.”

They will lie.

The warrant isn’t signed by a judge. They break down the door anyway.

They will say that you will see your child again.

They will take you to a detention center. They don’t like to call them “prisons.”

They don’t want us to make the connection. They build different pipelines that lead to the same destination. They are afraid we will figure it out.

They will start a war in a country that your kids will never learn about in school. They will lie about why you came here and never answer for the chaos they caused to push you out. When the tired, the poor, the huddled masses wash up on American shores they will lie. They will call you thieves. Threats to their livelihood. Terrorists to the American dream.

You have the right to remain silent. They will use anything you say against you. Dredge your paper trails for poltergeists: misdemeanors, missing signatures and misfiled forms. They will lie. They will find ghosts and call their actions a necessary exorcism.

You do not have the right to an attorney. They will not provide one for you. They will keep us underrepresented, as always.

They will come for us in broad daylight. They will knock on our doors and they will ask who is home, they will say whatever they need to. They will lie.

We have the right to remain silent. To say nothing when they ask who is home. To leave the door unopened. To question. To say we will not sign our lives away.

We have the right to remain angry. To be loud. To march in the streets. To dream. We have the right to be tired. To be poor. To huddle, en masse, and demand to breathe free.

Waking up in Occupied LA: July 4, 2025

by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

Some days I rise with fear in my chest

beating me down like batons, imagining

plastic ties handcuffing mis manos, in my mind, 

I cannot move; this is when I cannot breathe

this miedo, these thoughts terrorize, make me

fearful of even stepping outside and taking

my daily stroll around my SGV neighborhood.

I just want to be able to go buy groceries, fill 

my gas tank, pick up some Gelato from the

Italian market and not feel anxiety and even

though soy Americano ciudadano. Born here,

raised and living here, I fear because I look

a darker shade of brown, profiled racially by

those gestapo men in masks who kidnapped us

in the middle of the day, outside of car washes, 

Home Depot, on the way to our trabajos, rarely

asking for our identification just trying to fill

daily quotas, over-goosestepping on our due

process, as I write this my cat is giving me

golden kisses, my poet hermano suggested

I embrace everyone I love around me, as I

stand with my pen to the sky, there is lightning

and thunder within the ink oozing hope inside

this Poem is my voice, taking an exhale as I 

unlock the doorstep one foot outside, worrying

will LA, America ever feel safe and free ever

again, for someone who like me, an American

citizen who looks más marrón than the average

white voter? Today I wish viviendo occupied in

the middle of the Battle for Los Angeles, CA,

fireworks overhead, A sparkler of hope will arrive

when I unlock the front door, safe from anxiety,

my home, inside this battleground state of my mind,

I’m discovering doors that have never been opened.