Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detained three young St. Louis-area immigrants in Morrisonville, Ill. — a rural village about 45 miles outside of the state capitol. The incident occurred shortly after local police dropped them off with a verbal warning for driving without a valid license.
The United States’ immigration story is as old as the country itself. It stretches from Ellis Island to California’s borderlands, from rural towns to major cities — and into the lives of countless families chasing stability, safety and opportunity.
As a child of Latino immigrants, I grew up hearing my community’s hopes for better education, reliable work, access to healthcare and a chance to build something that can last generations.
Those motivations, and the curiosity behind them, have lingered with me years later.
Who gets to call themselves American? What barriers are there? How is policy changing? When immigration officials allege they’re targeting violent criminals, who’s actually getting swept up?
St. Louis Public Radio has been exploring those questions across Missouri and southern Illinois. After ICE took those three local immigrants, I traveled to Morrisonville, a rural Illinois village lined with grain elevators, silos and railroad tracks.
Immigration advocates reached out, but questions remained: How did this happen? Did police call ICE, possibly breaking Illinois law? Where are the three young men now?
I fired off public records requests, drove to Morrisonville and contacted public officials for weeks. Many of them didn’t respond. What I did find raised more questions.
While more is now known about this story, it doesn’t offer a neat ending. Immigration stories rarely do. Nevertheless, we will continue to ask hard questions, document what is happening and hold officials accountable. | 
