A Tale of Two Immigrants
In the small, rural upstate NY town where I live 21-year-old Gerson Santamaria Turcios runs his own lawn care business. He built it himself after graduating from the local high school. His business is already a success. The town is surrounded by farms, cows, horses, corn. Gerson is a wonderful part of this charming Americana community. So charming, in fact, that it has been featured in a number of corny Hallmark movies. Snowy in the winter, leafy green in the summer. And in the fall the town goes full Charlie Brown halloween with little Buzz Lightyears and Princess Tianas skipping from porch to porch welcomed by smiling adults with huge buckets of candy. He is living what many would call the “American dream.”
I think of the words of Langston Hughes:
“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed…”
On July 18th, 2025, just as he had finished up a job and was on his way home, ICE agents grabbed and detained Gerson.
