Dozens of neighbors and co-workers joined Carol Mayorga’s companion and three children to welcome her home to Kennett, Missouri, after her release from detention by immigration authorities June 4. The crowd was part of hundreds in this farming community of less than 10,000 people in Missouri’s southeastern boot heel who took up the fight to win her freedom.
Mayorga, originally from Hong Kong and whose legal name is Ming Li Hui, was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in St. Louis April 30 when she appeared for what she thought was a routine appointment to renew her employment authorization documents. Instead, after being told to wait for seven hours, she was shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, put into a van and taken away to Phelps County Jail in Rolla, Missouri, then Greene County Jail in Springfield.
Her arrest sent shockwaves through Kennett, where Mayorga has lived for 20 years, working as a waitress and cleaning houses on the side. To many she was a mother of three they spoke with at their kids soccer and Little League games and joined at Sunday Mass at the local Catholic church. In a rural town where the population is declining and the only hospital has closed, Chuck Earnest, a farmer, told the New York Times, “She’s exactly the sort of person you’d want to come to the country.”
In many places across the nation, where immigrant workers have lived and worked for years alongside U.S.-born toilers, they’ve broken down the propaganda of the capitalist rulers seeking to divide and exploit them.
When an article about her detention ran in the local newspaper, it was deluged with 400 comments, the large majority sympathetic to Mayorga, but not all. “If you’re here illegally, expect to be removed,” one person commented. Another just wrote, “Bye.”
Church members organized to provide meals for her family. “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” Vanessa Cowart, a church friend of Mayorga’s, told the Times. “But no one voted to deport moms.”
The staff at John’s Waffle and Pancake House where Mayorga worked rallied the community in her defense. Servers swapped out their regular work shirts for black-and-yellow T-shirts that read, “Bring Carol Home.” They made shirts saying, “Bring Mom Home” for her children.
Petitions demanding her freedom were placed on every table next to the packets of jelly and ketchup. “Each of us who has signed this petition stands firmly in agreement that Carol is not a threat to anyone. On the contrary, she is a generous, hardworking, and family-oriented individual whose character and actions reflect compassion, responsibility, and dedication to her loved ones,” it said. Hundreds of area residents signed.
Three weeks after Mayorga’s arrest the owner and co-workers at the restaurant organized a “Carol Day” fundraiser at work on their day off, pledging to donate all of the day’s sales to her legal fund and to support her family. Cars and trucks filled the parking lot with some waiting hours for a seat. And some had to be turned away at the end of the day. More than $20,000 was raised.
“I think it’s the sorriest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Judy Casey as she sat with her husband at the fundraiser. “She went up there to get renewed, and they just kept her. Her family didn’t get to know it. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to her family or anything.”
As outrage over Mayorga’s arrest grew and her attorney, Raymond Bolourtchi, announced plans to file a federal lawsuit to prove she qualified to stay in the U.S. under a program known as Deferred Enforcement Departure, which applies to residents of Hong Kong, ICE’s legal team admitted that she is eligible.
But the program is only in effect until February 2027, giving Mayorga a reprieve but not permanent protection from deportation. She is due to report to ICE again on June 25.
When she called to say she’d been released, a neighbor immediately made the four-hour trip to bring Mayorga home. And people began to gather at the diner’s parking lot to welcome her back.
“By no means are we in the clear,” Bolourtchi told the Times. “But at this point I’m optimistic.” He said her release “never would have happened without her community standing behind her.”