SACRAMENTO — A week or so before Christmas, Sacramento police descended on a residential block in a Latino neighborhood in California’s capital city, closing it off on either end.
Then the party started.
Undocumented families filled the street for a posada, a Latin American Christmas tradition akin to a roving block party, with music, food and an increasingly rare sense of safety.
Volunteers handed out toys, a mariachi band played, cops passed out stickers of badges and greeted guests as they rounded the corners, politicians ate pozole.
“This brings out the community, brings a little bit of joy into their lives,” organizer Ramona Landeros told me. “This street is like a safe haven for a lot of our folks.”
Times have rarely been this tough for immigrants, as we all know. Legal status or not, many of America’s transplants are living in fear of President Trump’s deportation drive.
Across California, where about 40% of the population is Latino and up to 7% is undocumented, that anxiety has been especially sharp, and personal. Families here are status-blended. Nearly every one of us knows someone here without legal documents. All of us have seen the videos and reports of brown people being detained, citizens or not.
That fear is driving undocumented people out of public life. Groceries, retail stores, schools, churches. These have become dangerous places, places where immigration agents could show up at any time, turning an ordinary life into a nightmare.
The posada was a celebration not in spite of all that, but because of it — a moment of hope and happiness amid turmoil, and a reminder that not everyone, not even every law enforcement officer, sees immigration status as a measure of worth.
“The department is here for them. They don’t have to be afraid of the police,” Sacramento Police Sgt. Luke Moseley told me, standing near the toy table. “We’re the good guys, trying to help out everybody as much as we can.”
Landeros has hosted this event for 11 years, along with a weekly food bank that operates out of her driveway. She was a farmworker until she was 17, an “original commuter” as she puts it, traveling with her family among Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah and the Golden State as the crops dictated. It was a life that left little time, or money, for celebrations.
“During our holidays, working in the fields, there was never a present under the tree,” she said.
When she was 13, a group of students organized a giveaway and she received her first gift — a bottle of Avon perfume that smelled like Hawaiian ginger.
“I’ll never forget, because it’s left such an impact,” she said. “I remember being so touched and moved.”
Now, she pays it forward.
“This is a time where the kids get to get that gift that maybe their parents can’t give them, you know, maybe can’t afford it,” she said. “I ask the families, ‘What would your children like?’ And they always say, ‘Well, they need a jacket, or they need boots.’ Then we all say, ‘What would they like?’ Big difference, right?”
The answer to that question of desire over need was the table full of stuffed animals and footballs, dolls and trucks. Nearby, a gaggle of bikes awaited new riders.
Fourteen-year-old Aritzi was there with her five cousins, all younger. She watches them nearly every day. I’m not using her last name because, well, you get it. She came to this country with her parents when she was 9, and dreams of being a police officer, because she wants to help people. But now, her parents are talking about going back to Mexico because life here is so uncertain.
“I was really sad, because I was like, it’s not fair for us to just come here and make a life and then just have to go back and, like, make a new life over there,” she said.
But at least for today, here on this street, “it just feels like a good place to be,” she said.
That’s a small but important comfort in hard days, and maybe the best gift of all.
