US cities revive Day of the Dead celebrations as ICE arrests continue

Cancellations persist in San Antonio, Fresno and Asbury Park amid detention expansion

The Día de los Muertos celebration in Henderson, Kentucky, returns on Saturday, one year after organizers canceled it over concerns that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would use the event as an opportunity to arrest undocumented immigrants. The town of 27,000 people is among a group of US cities — including Long Beach, California — reviving public Day of the Dead festivals after calling off last year’s editions. Other communities, including San Antonio and Fresno, California, are canceling this year’s events instead.

Julia, a 19-year-old born in the United States whose parents are undocumented immigrants from Mexico, has attended the Henderson celebration each year with her family, selling aguas frescas, horchatas and a sweet bread traditionally eaten on the Mexican holiday. Last year, her family built an ofrenda, or altar, with flowers and a violin honoring her grandfather, who played the instrument and died in 2023 in Mexico. The Guardian is using “Julia” as a pseudonym to protect her.

“I trust in the leadership that we have in our community, and if they believe it’s safe to have it, then I trust in that,” said Julia, who is studying political science and secondary education in college.

Brad Schneider, the judge/executive of Henderson County who co-founded the event, said the 2025 cancellation came after a clear signal from the area’s Latino residents. “The political climate around immigration was so difficult and controversial that we got a clear message from folks in the Latino community here” that “they would not come,” Schneider said.

Día de los Muertos takes place over several days and dates back thousands of years to the Aztecs, who believed that death was part of a larger cycle of existence. The popular belief holds that during the holiday, souls of the deceased can return to earth to be with their loved ones, and the living build ofrendas to welcome their spirits. Millions attend celebrations in Mexico, and Day of the Dead events in US cities such as Los Angeles and San Antonio have drawn tens of thousands of people.

Schneider grew up in Arizona and California and moved to Henderson almost 40 years ago, watching as Latino residents settled in the area; they now comprise about 5% of the local population, according to the Census Bureau. After watching the 2015 James Bond film Spectre, which opens at a Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico City, he asked Abraham Brown, owner of a Mexican restaurant in nearby Evansville, Indiana, whether they could hold such a celebration in Henderson. Brown told him it was a great idea, and the inaugural event followed in 2019, featuring mariachi bands, Mexican food, a faux graveyard where people decorate headstones, and face-painting. “It was a huge hit, much to our surprise,” Schneider said.

But in 2025, Schneider said, local Latino residents were “reading the newspaper reports and media accounts, children were separated from adults, and that was all very scary for people.” When he and Brown asked again this year at Mexican groceries and restaurants, he said, “the overwhelming response was that they wanted it.”

In Long Beach, California, the local government decided to hold its festival after canceling last year’s event because of concerns over immigration enforcement. “I think that it’s important to continue those traditions and be able to celebrate with family and friends, and so I wanted to give our city the opportunity to continue to do that,” city council member Mary Zendejas, who requested that organizers cancel the event in 2025, told the Long Beach Post.

Worcester, Massachusetts, took a different path last year. Organizers canceled the city’s celebration and instead held smaller events they did not announce on social media. “It had to be at a private location where not anyone could walk in, that wasn’t open to the general public, and we had to make sure that parking was close to the door, so people didn’t have to walk really far to get to their car,” said Raquel Castro, who runs the city’s division of youth opportunities and co-founded Casita Cultura Latina, which organizes the city’s Día de los Muertos celebration.

This year, Worcester returned to a public gathering on 24 October at a local park, with a mariachi band, a DJ and art in honor of this year’s theme, “Amor como resiliencia” — “Love as resilience.” About 2,000 people attended, Castro said. “It’s not easy to exist and to still bring joy in dark times, and we thought it was really important to do so,” said Castro, who immigrated from Ecuador.

ICE, meanwhile, has not gone anywhere. The agency has avoided some of the negative publicity it generated during its operation in Minneapolis in late 2025 and early 2026, but its monthly arrests and detentions increased in June and July, according to the Deportation Data Project.

In San Antonio, ICE recently signed leases worth $51 million for two office spaces and is preparing to open a detention center that can house 1,500 people per day, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Amid the effort to expand its footprint, Planet K, a local retailer, canceled its annual Día de los Muertos celebration, which it had held for 20 years. “This decision was not made lightly,” organizers posted on Facebook. “We refuse to bring people together under Ice terrorism.” City council member Marina Alderete Gavito, who particularly enjoyed the event’s fireworks show, said it is “just really sad that we are seeing these traditions” taken “away from us.”

Organizers also canceled Day of the Dead celebrations this year in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Fresno, California. ICE’s public affairs office did not respond to a question from The Guardian about whether the agency planned to send officers to Day of the Dead celebrations.

ICE has also appeared in Henderson. In July, federal agents arrested eight people there, the Hendersonian reported, including members of Julia’s church and one of her relatives. “He was the one that brought in the money, so it was a very difficult situation for them,” Julia said of her relative’s immediate family.

Julia’s mother recently obtained permanent residency, and her father is still working on his. Still, the family plans to attend and sell food at the Día de los Muertos celebration on Saturday. “I love seeing the same customers come back, but with more people that they love” to celebrate “what a different culture looks like and what it can look like anywhere, like, for example, in Henderson,” Julia said. “It makes me happy to see that we are able to celebrate that again, hopefully in a peaceful manner.”