Chris Garcia, 14, is not afraid to work.

But he is afraid for his mother Carmen, who was at her tamales stand on the corner of Parke Street and Garfield Avenue in Pasadena on June 21 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers picked up three of her customers.

“She’s afraid she’s going to get hit again, so I told her I’d help her,” Chris said.

On Friday, the Fourth of July, he was joined by a steady stream of new and regular customers who said the teenager’s plight brought them out in support of a son and a city they see in crisis.

Chris and his brother Erick, 20, brought 500 tamales and a large dispenser of champurrado to Friday’s shift at the corner of Villa Street and Los Robles Avenue, in front of an empty complex where a 99 Cents store once stood.

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For $3 each, customers could choose from chicken or pork rojos or verde, mole, spinach with cheese and dulces in strawberry and vanilla, as well as cups of champurrado. They sold out within two hours, calling their mother and Tia Patricia for backup.

Chris has been working his mother’s spot for about a week, arriving at the corner at 5 a.m. Tuesday through Friday. An incoming freshman at John Muir High School, Chris said he’s helped out his mother before, “usually lifting things that are too heavy for her, and when she cooks at home.”

The first time he stepped up was a year and a half ago when his mother suffered burns on her legs while cooking tamales, and had to have two surgeries, he said.

Carmen Garcia, who has four children, has been plying “The Best Tamales in Town” for more than 15 years, and is well-known among residents in the Villa Parke neighborhood.

“She’s a hard worker,” Chris said. “She doesn’t relax. She just sleeps, sometimes just half an hour. She works a lot.”

Of the people who came by, many of whom refused their change and left tips, Chris said “they’ve been good. I feel happy.”

Alex “Tio Joker” Murillo, 49, of South Pasadena, said a friend told him about the teenager selling tamales and champurrado at a city corner.

“I love helping people, and I want to work with teenagers, and he said you have to check out this kid selling tamales in Pasadena,” said Murillo, who works as a caregiver.

A video he recorded of a solemn-faced Chris on June 28 was shared online by the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) in Pasadena. Brandon Lamar, president of the NAACP San Gabriel Valley, came by the same day and bought Chris six pairs of shoes from the Pasadena Foot Locker.

The Trump administration’s agenda is to bring fear to communities, Lamar said. The antidote to that fear is “community coming together to make sure everyone is good.”

“This is the moment to support everybody, and support comes in many forms,” he added.

That support has cascaded in recent weeks amid multiple ICE arrests in the city and across Southern California. The Trump Administration has ramped up those arrests since early June, part of an effort, officials say, to mass deport “the worst of the worst” criminals who are in the country illegally. That effort, Homeland Security officials add, is working. Nationwide, U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions were at 8,039, breaking a previous record from March 2025, according to DHS, as of July 2.

But as the administration cracks down, local families and leaders say many – gardeners, construction workers, day laborers, agricultural and hospitality workers among them – being apprehended do not have criminal records, nor are they the hardened criminals Trump has long pledged to mass deport.

That has has raised the ire of local communities who are seeing in real time and on video masked federal agents show up unannounced on local streets, and at businesses and schools.

The June 21 encounter in front of the tamale stand immediately galvanized community support, as stunned neighbors flocked to the scene.

On Friday, Yunuen Ramos-Vega, 22, and her sister Janette, 21, of Monrovia, pooled money they had earned from working in restaurants to buy $70 worth of tamales. Both are college students who know people who have been detained. Janette Ramos-Vega said her godfather was arrested when he showed up for his immigration court hearing in San Bernardino, and he has been deported to Mexico.

The two woke up at 6:15 a.m. to be among the first in line. It was their first errand in a day full of them, a new normal since ICE raids began in Los Angeles in June.

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The sisters, afraid because of their parents’ immigration status, said they have taken over everything from banking to grocery shopping to going to the laundromat. They check in with each other at least three times a day via group chat.

“If we can help other people, we will help,” Yunuen said. “Just knowing anything can happen right now is pretty scary.”

Sady, 29, of El Monte, asked her last name not be used in fear of retaliation, is the daughter of Carlos Alexander Osorto, the man picked up by ICE at a Pasadena bus stop on June 18. Osorto, a day laborer from Honduras, has been in the United States for 14 years. He is at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and has a hearing scheduled on July 8, his daughter said.

His daughter said Osorto has six children and helps support another child.

“He’s a good person, he’s outgoing, generous and funny,” Sady said. “He has a strong attitude.”

Osorto is good grandfather to her four children, too, “hugging them and talking about random stuff.” NDLON is helping raise funds for Osorto’s legal representation, with officials from the group saying he was picked up without probable cause and denied due process guaranteed to every person in the United States. It is a lesson Sady has talked about with her children.

“I don’t sugarcoat what’s happened, there are no right words to explain why it’s unfair,” she said. “The world sure isn’t going to protect them, so you have to be straight with them so they’re able to defend themselves.”

Teacher Becky Duarte, 67, of West Covina, paid for three tamales and handed Chris a $50 tip.

“I knew I had to do something,” the 40-year teaching veteran said. “Doing this helps build strength and character, but it’s so unfortunate he has to do it this way, with the situation being what it is. As humans, we have to come together and support one another in whatever way we can. It’s just a drop in the bucket, but knowing I did something, that helps.”

Flori Schutzer, 74, has protested federal immigration operations in Los Angeles and Pasadena.

“We are our immigrant history, the country is all of us,” she said. “This is what we do when something is wrong. I cannot sit idly by. That’s Old Testament. ‘You shall not stand idly by the blood of your brother.’ We must be allies.”

Nolan Arcos, 30, said the raids across the Southland have angered people enough to protest, “but just as important as protesting is to engage in support like this, and working toward meaningful reform.”

Enji Chung, founder of the Fire Poppy Project, a mutual aid nonprofit responding to the Eaton Fire, said she is also helping patrol her neighborhood since the raids.

“These are our friends and family and community and we care about them, because of the kidnappings and the terror that’s been unleashed on this city,” Chung said. “It’s July Fourth, and what kind of independence and democracy are we celebrating when our community members are being snatched off our streets, disappeared and abused. This is not how we should be treating human beings.”

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The Colon family from Sylmar didn’t mind the 30-minute drive for tamales. Los Angeles, home to the country’s largest population of undocumented immigrants, owes so much to people like Chris Garcia and his mother, Susana Colon said.

“We’re trying to do what we can, to show up,” she said. “I’m an immigrant and I was undocumented, so my children see the story through me. I want to show them how we can love others.”

She and her husband Marvin brought their two daughters to the stand. Ten-year-old Ariana carefully emptied out a snack-size Ziploc of coins into the tips can.

“I think I put in 71 cents of my money,” Ariana said. “I’m here to support him and his family and also to get tamales.”

“¡Está bien,” said Luz Espinoza, 48, waving away her change. She said while she usually has tamales and champurrado during the holidays, “maybe this is going to be a new tradition.”

For NAACP San Gabriel Valley President Lamar, the situation is a chance to unite a struggle against racism and inequality.

Reflecting on how his family came to Pasadena in 1911 and were involved in activism and civic service, Lamar said history has taught him that Black and Brown communities need to work together because “we have overcome a lot of stuff because of solidarity.”