Sisters Norma and Maria Cabrales have owned and operated Gorditas Norma for 12 years. Those years have made for a steady routine that starts early each day, brings the women to their north Broadway restaurant by 3 a.m. and has them cooking and ready to serve early-morning workers by 5:30 a.m.
But earlier this month, that routine was interrupted with a phone call.
Gorditas Norma serves as a bus stop for the Madero Express. It’s one of several cross-country charter bus lines that travel to Mexico. At least three times a week, the Madero Express takes riders from cities like Omaha, Topeka, Kansas City and Wichita to Durango, Mexico.
The Express makes a quick stop at Gorditas Norma and typically leaves by 6 a.m. On July 10, air conditioning issues had the bus camped out in the restaurant’s parking lot for longer than expected, waiting for an auto parts store to open.
Around 7 a.m., Maria Cabrales got a call from one of the drivers. He told her Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were outside.
Norma Cabrales said she didn’t think. She grabbed her phone, told her employees to stay put, locked the restaurant and went outside with her sister.
“I went outside and started recording the video,” Norma Cabrales said in Spanish. “Because somehow I wanted to let our undocumented clients know not to come here, that immigration was here — to protect them from coming here at that moment and [potentially] being detained.”
Norma Cabrales went live on the restaurant’s Facebook account. Over the course of ten minutes, she filmed two ICE officers approaching the bus and questioning its drivers. The videos show at least two more officers hanging back by three large SUVs in the parking lot.
Work at Gorditas Norma starts early, around 3 a.m., and normally doesn't wrap up until 2:30 p.m. But Norma and Maria Cabrales said they didn't hesitate to shut down the restaurant earlier this month and tell customers to stay away when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers began questioning people in their parking lot.
Standing next to a group of about 10 passengers and their loved ones, Norma Cabrales issued a warning to anyone watching her livestream.
“Please stay as far away as you can,” she said. “Look, they are right here in the lot. Try to keep your distance — don't put yourselves at risk. If you are undocumented, don't expose yourselves to danger.”
Silvia Leyva owns Paqueteria Mexico, the Wichita-based transportation company that operates the Madero Express. She said the drivers called her and told her that ICE agents had come to the bus and wanted to see immigration and work documents for both the passengers and the drivers.
“There were more people around, but they didn’t check them,” Leyva said in Spanish. “But 99 percent of travelers to Mexico are people with legal status that can come and go and operators have valid [work] permits because they come and go.”
The agents reviewed documents provided by the drivers, but didn’t arrest anyone. Leyva said she’d heard of Customs and Border Patrol agents stopping Greyhound buses before, but never buses traveling to Mexico. It was the first time that any of the buses from Leyva’s company had an encounter with ICE agents.
Even without any arrests, Leyva said the moment was tense. She thinks there may have been people without permanent legal status who were at the bus stop to see their loved ones off. Leyva said the drivers told her it looked like the agents were only interested in people who would actually be traveling on the bus.
Norma Cabrales’ video blew up online and capped a tense week for Wichita’s immigrant and Latino community.
The Cabraleses said ICE agents had been patrolling the NoMar neighborhood for days before the stop. The sisters had seen the agents’ large, unmarked SUVs driving up and down Broadway. They’d seen the same cars in videos of a dramatic arrest, just south of the restaurant, two days prior.
That arrest had been caught on video by someone driving by the neighboring railyard. In the video, three SUVs drive after a man as he runs across Broadway and on to the train tracks. Two agents jump from their cars and tackle the man near the tracks, before two more agents get out of their cars to assist with the arrest.
The video was posted a day after the high profile death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas. Salgado Araujo was shot and killed by ICE agents who stopped the van he was driving. Salgado Araujo was a father of three and a Mexican national who did not have legal immigration status in the United States.
Wichita Police and Sedgwick County Sheriff officials say their offices were not notified of any specific operations or the additional patrols NoMar residents report in the area. Both offices said that ICE is not required to notify local law enforcement of their activities in the area.
KMUW made multiple attempts to contact ICE officials about the stop and the presence of agents in the NoMar neighborhood. The agency did not respond to those requests for comment.
Even before the incident with the Madero Express, Norma Cabrales said the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood had a chilling effect on the restaurant.
“Since Monday we haven't even sold half of what we usually sell,” Norma Cabrales said in the hours after the stop. ”Because people know [about immigration enforcement] ... but like I said, we would rather have people be safe than us make our regular sales — I prefer a thousand times over that people be OK, even if it means losing some of our business.”
Business has been down throughout the neighborhood. Norma Cabrales said she knows many people who are out of work because they’re afraid to be caught in public by ICE agents. That has meant tighter budgets for some families and fewer dollars to spend at places like Gorditas Norma.
In the hours after Norma Cabrales’ livestream, several local restaurants took the step of telling people to stay home, voluntarily shutting down for the day or telling customers they would only be making deliveries.
Another Wichita-based bus company that transports people to and from Mexico made a post on Facebook asking that only passengers come to the stop, and to keep family members and friends away.
A translation of the Spanish post said the change was being made in the wake of the stop of the Madero Express.
"We understand this is not an easy request and we appreciate your understanding," the post said. "This measure is aimed solely to protect the safety and well-being of our entire community, especially considering the events that have occurred in recent days."
Leyva’s company didn’t make the same request of its customers, but she says it didn’t have to.
“What a lot of people did was come catch the bus and leave their car outside,” Leyva said. “They later sent someone to pick up their cars, worried that maybe whoever was bringing them to the bus stop would have problems [with ICE].”
Norma Cabrales said that after the agents left and the bus departed, she and her sister went back into the restaurant and prepared their employees. She told them she didn’t expect to get much — if any — business the rest of the day and that they might not sell enough food to cover paychecks for the day.
Instead, the Wichita community rallied around the Cabraleses and their restaurant. People boosted the videos on social media, reposting them with a callout to buy from the restaurant. Other businesses in NoMar called in lunch orders out of the blue for their staff or offered to buy out the rest of the food for the day.
The restaurant also sells tickets for some of the bus lines that stop at the restaurant. Norma Cabrales said even with the search earlier in the day, she sold several tickets for bus trips for the following days. By the time the Gorditas Norma closed at 2:30 p.m, the restaurant had done double the business of a typical day.
That support and unity was a blessing, Norma Cabrales said, especially as she worries for her community.
“I really, I wanted to cry during the entire day,” Norma Cabrales said. “I feel helpless. ... They say they [ICE] are just looking for people who owe something or who are criminals.
“That's not true, because there were no criminals here. They weren't looking for anyone,” she said. “It was people on a bus. I don't believe them anymore when they say they are just looking for criminals.”
