False ICE raid rumor spread by California city councilmember spoils popular flea market, hurts local vendors: ‘He scared a lot of Mexicans away'
A popular outdoor flea market in California was left empty after a false rumor about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid was spread by a Fresno city councilmember and spun out of control online — ruining the weekend for many vendors who rely on the market for income.
Fresno Councilmember Miguel Arias warned of an impending ICE raid at the Cherry Avenue Auction, which typically draws thousands of locals each weekend, during a council meeting on Thursday.
'We have learned that this weekend, ICE is planning to engage in a massive immigration raid at the Cherry Auction in Fresno. So, I would advise our immigrant community to stay away from the Cherry Auction this weekend, as they could be putting themselves and their families at risk of being picked up,' Arias said.
3 The Cherry Avenue Auction was empty over the weekend after a false ICE raid rumor was spread.
Fox26
The warning was enough to put many residents of Fresno and Easton, the community that hosts the market, on high alert.
Many heard Arias' warnings repeated on TikTok, and one man stood about a block from the market over the weekend holding a sign reading 'La migra está en el remate,' or 'immigration is at the auction' in English, The Fresno Bee reported.
3 Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias originally warned about the raid during a City Council meeting last Thursday.
Facebook
Even so, the Cherry Avenue Auction insisted that it had 'no knowledge of any planned ICE raid' and had 'not been notified of any such action.'
'We are also aware of recent public comments by Councilmember Miguel Arias, claiming to have knowledge of an ICE raid at our location. Since Cherry Avenue Auction is located within Fresno County jurisdiction — not the city of Fresno — we find it puzzling and offensive that a city councilmember would claim to possess such information,' the auction wrote in a statement.
Many vendors were disappointed by the small turnout at the usually packed swap meet and struggled to fathom how they would supplement the lost earnings as the market drew to a close.
'I don't see the way I'm going to make any money out here today. This is my main source of income and today is one of the most important days of the week for me, so it's really affecting me,' Robert Brambila, who has sold outdoor work gear at the market for three decades, told The Bee.
3 Arias thanked the local immigrant community in a Facebook post after the raid didn't happen.
Fox26
Other vendors echoed Brambila's sentiments — and struggled to understand Arias' decision-making.
'If Arias just spread a rumor, he caused people to lose a lot of money today. He scared a lot of Mexicans away,' Devon Solis, a vendor who sells plants and clothing with her family, told The Bee.
In the wake of the market's washout weekend, Arias surmised that the ICE raid didn't take place because of the immigrant community 'exercising precaution' following his warnings.
'Please continue sharing ICE activity taking place in your area, as it has become the best way to keep each other safe during President Trump's cruel ICE raids,' Arias wrote on Facebook.
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Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
The Supreme Court Decision That Gives Trump Cover for National ICE Raids
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an hour ago
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Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
In Joyce Carol Oates' luridly seductive ‘Fox,' a pedophile teacher ends up dead
'Fox' opens in October of 2013 with the grisly discovery of a wrecked white Acura and a dismembered body at the bottom of a South Jersey ravine. Joyce Carol Oates calmly winds the mystery backward through the repulsive actions of the deceased before he meets an untimely death, building fear alongside fascination before she finally reveals how he came to his end — and at whose hand. Francis Fox, pedophile, is a smug, deceitful middle school English teacher, practiced in the art of seduction and the rewards and punishment psychology of B.F. Skinner. Fox has been moving from school to school for years, disguising his identity to escape the consequences of his actions. When he vanishes from the Langhorne Academy and his disappearance is investigated by Det. Horace Zwender, there is no dearth of likely suspects: He has wronged everyone from his college girlfriend to the academy's headmistress; he has abused girls at multiple schools. He's lied to everyone, and nobody truly knows him. 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Oates leads us through Fox's lurid world, drawing deliberately uncomfortable parallels between his calculated actions and the work of novelists and teachers, each of whom must also use enticement and enchantment to reach their mark. Her dark protagonist is highly educated, allowing him to deftly anticipate the actions of his potential victims and accusers. The DNA of 'Fox' is thus in art and literature: Francis Fox uses both to develop his outer and inner life. Fox imagines his girls as Balthusian waifs, attracting him with a distracted air of seduction. He obsessively disdains 'Lolita,' remarking often on the impractical physicality of Humbert's sexual relationship; in doing so, he reveals his unhealthy fixations and predilections. 'Fox' similarly explores Edgar Allan Poe's life. Poe is credited with writing the first American detective story, and Oates writes in the same vein. But Fox is fixated on Poe's dead-girl literature and his real-life marriage to a child bride. Oates seems to posit that we allow whatever entertains, and we return to whatever has entertained before. She picks at the American lionization of our creative heroes, especially those with asterisks next to their names because they've abused young women. That society allows such men to become heroes is as troubling as her protagonist's actions. It appears that she wants us to indict us, too. Fox calls himself alternately 'Mr. Tongue' or 'Big Teddy Bear' when he brings his eager seventh-grade charges to his basement office to snuggle, kiss and photograph, luring them there with the promise of comments on their writing and drugging them with benzo-laced treats. 'It was his strategy,' Oates writes, 'as soon as possible in a new term, to determine which girls, if they were attractive, were fatherless. For a fatherless girl is an exquisite rose on a branch lacking thorns, there for the picking.' The lurid scenes where Fox abuses students like Genevieve, his favorite 'Little Kitten,' in his locked office are vile. Yet in addition to fitting the stereotypical profile of a pedophile, he also wields abusive and cold-blooded coercion in the classroom. Following the 'principle of intermittent reinforcement, in which an experimental subject is rewarded for their effort not continuously, or predictably, but intermittently, or unpredictably,' he grades 'in a way designed to shatter her defenses: it will be impossible for her not to feel relief, gratitude, some measure of happiness when her grade improves, thus she will be conditioned to seek a higher grade.' This is a chilling reminder that artistic mentors can be abusive in many different ways. Francis Fox torments his pupils at every level, using calculated psychology to entice and to destroy. 'Fox' hauntingly explores the way that beguiling figures can inspire, create and shape art. Oates presents the idea of malignant artistic inspiration. One of Fox's charges keeps his darkest secrets in a 'Mystery-Journal.' The mystery of Fox's death gets resolved, yet Oates doesn't end there: Her ending changes who has the power. Twisted expectation and manipulated attention are both hallmarks of artistic creation. In the wrong hands — like Francis Fox's — they're instruments of torture. In the author's, they're tools. The allusive nature of 'Fox' and its twist ending shows how greatness that comes from awfulness can be inconveniently, unquestioningly good. What do we do with the idea that the worst offenses can also sometimes create art? Readers, consumers and audiences haven't yet come to peace with that, just like we haven't come to terms with how to separate art from a monstrous artist. Oates wants us to turn pages and squirm. Partington is a teacher in Elk Grove and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle.
