In a charged political climate, Colombian Fest opens with a message for ICE: 'Cease and desist'

El Gran Festival Colombiano organizers held a news conference Friday afternoon to ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal authorities to stay clear of the festival in Humboldt Park this weekend.

Jorge Ortega, founder and director of the annual Colombian Fest, was joined by several other community leaders and elected officials at the main stage to send a clear message to ICE: “Cease and desist.”

Carlos Ramírez-Rosa, chief executive of the Chicago Park District, said the July 9 incident at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture, when officers with the Department of Homeland Security parked 15 unmarked vehicles in the museum’s private lot, is a “travesty.”

Puerto Rican museum staff previously told the Sun-Times that they overheard the self-identified DHS agents talking about upcoming festivals in the area, including the Gran Festival Colombiano, featuring Colombian culture, food and music.

And although the agents’ vans are long gone, the panic that has spread across cultural institutions and events has been growing.

Those fears are putting festival organizers and museum leaders in a bind as they weigh how to protect their audiences. Concern about potential raids also puts them at odds with promoting events at a time when attendees fear being interrogated or deported.

“These events that bring families together are a critical part of summertime in Chicago. They make us safer, they make us healthier, they make us happier,” Ramírez-Rosa said.

In response to the July 9 incident, he said, the Chicago Park District sent a letter to the head of ICE in Chicago, asking the agency to “cease and desist” and stop targeting events like the Colombian Fest and trespassing on park district property.

Ortega told the Sun-Times that they’ve invested more in private security for this year’s festival. They’ll have watchdog attorneys, rapid response volunteers and legal consultants on-site to help people with their individual cases.

Hours before the news conference, rumors of ICE going door-to-door in Humboldt Park were circulating on social media.

Cook County Commissioner Jessica Vásquez said that although rapid response volunteers were not able to confirm the rumors, it’s likely that what is being observed was the targeting of specific individuals at their homes.

“Our rapid response volunteers, they're trained in de-escalation. They're trained to document. They're trained to look out,” Vásquez said.

The incident at the Puerto Rican museum has “scared a lot of the immigrant community,” Ortega said. He estimates that ticket sales for the festival are down about 40% to 50% from last year, especially for Sunday, when many of the performing artists are Colombian.

A few vendors dropped at the last minute, he said. Some of the vendors that dropped out have staffing shortages or are immigrants classified under Temporary Protected Status and did not want to take risks, he said.

“It created so much panic and fear in our community,” Ortega added, saying that he’s also noticed fewer guests at Colombian and Venezuelan restaurants across the city.

But a great turnout at the Puerto Rican museum’s Barrio Arts Festival last weekend, which also had rapid response volunteers on the scene, gave Ortega and his team some hope.

Stella Londoño, along with her sister, Alexandra García, and father, Edilberto Londoño, are selling tropical fruit paletas at the festival this weekend with their wholesale company, SAS Foods Inc.

They distribute their products, which include empanadas, breads and more, to supermarkets across the Midwest. They’ve worked at various festivals, including the Colombian fest, for many years.“We stay together no matter what,” Stella Londoño said. “We stay to the core of being Colombian and standing together as a family, as friends, as a community, because this is what brings us together … we support each other and say that we can do this.”

José Ochoa, the president and chief executive of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen, said prior to the DHS visit that he had already been in touch with Billy Ocasio, the director of the Puerto Rican museum. Together, they have been thinking about ways to protect guests from federal law enforcement.

On July 3, an agent with the U.S. Marshals Service entered the Pilsen museum, Ochoa said. The officer used the restroom, according to museum staff, but Ochoa says he's treating that visit like an "unwelcome dress rehearsal" for what the future might hold.

Cultural institutions like both museums are committed to being safe spaces in their respective communities because "we shouldn't cower and we shouldn't hide," he added.