Vigil for the Disappeared at Children’s Park in downtown Chico Saturday

From 9 to 10 a.m. Saturday, July 25, Chico will join The National Day of Vigils by holding one for those murdered and disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Imagine you are a 3-year-old girl in your Bluey pajamas who is trying to understand why your daddy won’t get up off the ground and hug your mommy who is sitting on the curb crying inconsolably. Your father is Johan Sebastian Guerrero, 25. He has just been murdered courtesy of an ICE agent who conveniently wore no body camera.

Ronaldo Salgado, adult son of slain 52-year-old Mexican immigrant Lorenzo Salgado Araujo who was murdered by ICE last week, had to learn the horror of his father’s death by actually hearing him “through a video posted online that depicted him ‘screaming’ for help.”

“He was actively bleeding. He was screaming for someone to help him,” Salgado told CBS News during an interview in Houston.

Twenty-seven lives have been lost to ICE officials in 2026; 22 while in custody, and five enforcement related deaths like those of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, both of Minnesota.

The fifth enforcement related death occurred only days ago while Juan Coronilla Duran, 28, from Mexico was in Florida. He was struck and killed by a semi-truck while fleeing an ICE encounter at a gas station on State Road 16.

There are countless others in our country, our America, who have been murdered, who have been disappeared, who have died from neglect, medical maltreatment, starvation and other ways we’ll probably never know of.

According to the statement from Re-Sisters, “The Re-Sisters of Chico provided a vigil for the Disappeared about one year ago and at that time we mourned the deaths and disappearance of approximately 2,700 people by writing their names on a 180-foot scroll and reading off as many as we could at a solemn ceremony. This Saturday, on July 25, we will hold another vigil because in one years’ time thousands more names have been added to the list and we mourn every passing.

Frightened immigrants, undocumented as well as US citizens, children, are abducted off the streets by individuals in black masks and never seen again. No information for families or loved ones. Kidnapped with no ransom note by ICE agents.

The “lucky ones” who are not disappeared are detained into places like Delaney Hall Detention Facility in New Jersey, which is nothing more than a concentration camp.

Conditions reported include insufficient and poor-quality meals, worms in their food, systematic medical neglect, verbally and physically aggressive guards, extreme cold in the winter, and lack of basic supplies like toilet paper. This information has been gleaned by detainees smuggling letters out to protesters and news media.

But they will all be remembered by all of us here. We will see their names, remember their names. We will gather because we do not want to forget our fellow humans. While we remember with our silent prayers, Lupita Araim-Law will read the 27 names of victims lost to ICE through mid-July 2026, followed by other ceremonial activities. Closing notes from a Tibetan sound bowl will finish the ceremony.

Tracking the Disappeared
The Disappeared Independent research organizations, human rights groups and a specialized data tracker keep logs on individuals who have vanished or dropped off the grid while in ICE custody.

There is a major transparency crisis. This involves the systematic failure of the official government database, secretive rapid transfers and a mass disappearance of more than a thousand detainees from records at controversial Florida mega-facilities like “Alligator Alcatraz” which has now closed although it is not known where all the detainees have ended up.

Key entities tracking the data
Because ICE has heavily delayed its congressionally mandated data reporting, public accountability relies almost entirely on third-party organizations:
The United States Disappeared Tracker
Created by data analyst Danielle Harlow, this dedicated repository specifically logs and tracks immigrants who have disappeared as part of mass deportation sweeps and secretive detention practices.

The Deportation Data Project
This project directly requests, archives and analyzes raw ICE data via Freedom of Information Act requests. They specifically map out “vanishing” trends, tracking how detainees are rapidly transferred across states to obscure their whereabouts.

TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse)
Based at Syracuse University, TRAC is the premier nonpartisan research center compiling immigration enforcement data. They consistently sound the alarm when government record-keeping goes dark.

The Vera Institute of Justice
Vera hosts an interactive ICE Detention Trends Dashboard. Their data exposes the gap between reality and government claims  revealing that ICE has been hiding hundreds of operational or newly opened “shadow” facilities from its public website.

Amnesty International and Freedom for Immigrants
These advocacy groups track “enforced disappearances” — instances where ICE or state-contracted facilities hold individuals completely incommunicado, denying their location to families and attorneys.

About The Re-Sisters
The Re-Sisters are a group of action-oriented people dedicated to bringing down the Trump fascist regime through non-violent civil resistance and rapid response to ever changing critical issues. We include and hold dear all people and organize weekly protests which attract over 100 people.

For more information, call LeAnn Jenswold (530) 228-1240 or Kate McCracken  at (530) 828–2211.