“Bring Carol Home”

In the past week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained immigrants at courthouses in Van Nuys, California; San Antonio, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Miami, Florida; and perhaps a dozen other cities. At a courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri, agents arrested Carol Mayorga, 45, who had gone to the court in order to renew her employment authorization. For the Midwest Newsroom, a multi-state NPR partnership, Kavahn Mansouri and Chad Davis document the aftermath of Mayorga’s recent arrest in Kennett, a city of 10,000 people in southeastern Missouri where Mayorga lived for roughly 20 years. Their story is a simple, powerful document of local disbelief—a snapshot of a community whose members may support the Trump Administration but cannot square its ongoing detention of immigrants with the arrest and removal of their neighbors.

Servers greeted most customers with a hug and small talk before handing out devices that buzzed when a seat opened up at the diner. Some waited hours for a seat.

Conversations struck a defiant tone. Customers said that they were there to support their friend and that they wanted her back home.

For many who gathered at John’s that morning, Mayorga’s detainment was a step too far by the Trump administration, an administration many at the restaurant say they voted for and support.

“Ninety-five percent of the people in here support Trump — I do, too — but this is wrong,” said Bud Garrison, a daily customer at John’s.

Garrison and his wife, Anita, made black T-shirts with bold yellow wording that read in all caps, “Bring Carol Home” and on the sleeve say #TEAMCAROL. They described Mayorga as the wrong type of person for Trump to deport.

“We don’t feel what’s happened to her is right,” said Anita Garrison. “She’s a very upstanding citizen in our community. Her kids are into the sports, she’s in the church, and she’s a very upstanding citizen as far as I’m concerned. I think she deserves to be free with her kids.”