I was born in Brazil. And my mom moved here with me to New Orleans and I’ve always been her voice. I’m an only child. And I’m the one that learned English faster. So I had to speak up for her and be there for her. That’s been my entire life.
I always wanted to make sure that children didn’t have to do that. So I always advocated not only for myself, but for the parents of my children’s friends’ parents, right? I always have just done that, my whole life.
In the beginning, my mom did not understand my mission. My mom was like, “You need to be careful.” She was very, very cautious about it. She was cautious about supporting me. It was really hard.
For years, I didn’t even know what a community organizer was. When I went to a training for community organizing, I realized: “Oh, this is what I’ve been doing.
I started learning all these organizer terms. When I started working in schools, my job might be to teach or help somewhere, but I always advocated on behalf of the parents. Then I became a parent liaison and I’m like, “Oh, that’s what that’s called.”
I have fought with the school system about injustice. I fought with the New Orleans Police Department about injustice.
My faith, you know, really carries me through. As the Bible says, “Our purpose is to serve one another.” Last year, I had some very life-threatening surgeries. I was in the ICU for 17 days. I died twice on the operating table and was brought back. Afterward, I told her, “Mom, God, allowed me to be here so I can serve.”
But because of her anxiety, my mom still wondered if I really needed to fight against these powerful places.
This immigration crackdown is what opened her eyes.
She is looking at the news and seeing what’s happening. She said, “Christi, even though I’m a U.S. citizen and even though you are a U.S. citizen, I fear for us. And it’s not fair that our neighbors have to worry like this. It’s not fair that people that are trying to work have to worry.”
After Katrina, she saw that our folks helped us rebuild the city. Folks came into our neighborhood and helped us rebuild our house. She’s grateful for that. She doesn’t forget.
When I go out, she still says, “Just be careful, baby. Just be careful.”
But she’s up making me coffee and taking care of me.
I’m not trying to protect people who did wrong. I even tell my community members, if you raped or killed, we don’t want you here. If you abused a child, we don’t want you here. But some of the cases are not so clear. They maybe got a charge because the police arrested the wrong person. Or it just got dismissed. They didn’t skip court or skip bail. They are innocent.
But immigration doesn’t see it that way. And they’re not just picking up specific people. They’re stopping anybody.
At first, we saw the nightly drones. Four o’clock in the morning, they were coming out. We saw the undercover agents in regular cars, parked in certain areas, in certain neighborhoods.
One day, when I was on Facebook Live, Immigration tried to run me and my mother off the road. I had brought her to go get some coffee and we were coming back home and I’m like, “That’s them.” So I followed them. And they made a sharp U-turn. And then, right when they got close to me, they swerved toward me.
That shocked me because my mom was in the car. And I said, “Mom, are you okay?” And she said, “Yeah, they tried to hit you, you know?”
I dropped her off thinking that I didn’t want her pressure to go up. But as soon as I made the block from home, three agents were blocking me in the middle of the road.
They told me that this is my last warning, that I’m impeding their investigation and that I should not be following them and recording them. I told them that it’s my right to record them. And that’s when a lot of the folks came to help; they started recording everything that was happening.
And then here comes my mom in her little old car. She came out there in her house dress to bring me a sweater. And as she handed it off, she told me, “You know you got this. This is your community.” And she said, “This is your community” with her heaviest Brazilian accent.
Then, as she drove past Immigration, she blew her horn. I could see her anger. That hit me. Because my mom has been cautious all my life. She would not have ever blown her horn at any police officer. She would not have looked at them like she looked those immigration officers in the face and said, “Go home. We don’t want you here.”
I was like, “My mom finally gets what I’m fighting for.”
She’s not that person. But she became that person when immigration started acting like this.
Cristi Rosales-Fajardo is a longtime New Orleans human-rights advocate who is working to keep her community safe in the face of increased immigration enforcement in the city.
