They won't be celebrating the Fourth of July in Bell Gardens this year.

The California town of Cudahy is just down the road from Bell Gardens.

In the early 70s I lived in a shared apartment in the California town of Bell Gardens, southeast of Los Angeles.

In fact, we survived the 1971 Simi Valley earthquake in that apartment.

Bell Gardens is far away from the Hollywood tinsel of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

We did our weekly shopping at the Von’s in the working class town Downey and would often grab lunch at the local burrito stand on Florence Avenue.

We had to travel to the Bob’s Big Boy in Downey for our favorite dining spot.

Back in those days Bell Gardens was largely poor and white. Residents were often descendants of the Okies that moved west in the 30s during what was called the Dust Bowl.

But Bell Gardens has history dating back to the late 1700's when it was a bustling agricultural center for immigrants from Mexico.

The 2020 census reports that the Bell Gardens of today is 97% Latino, mostly immigrants from Mexico.

They won’t be celebrating U.S. Independence Day in Bell Gardens this year.

Or in Cudahy, the mostly immigrant town just down Florence Avenue.

The East L.A. July 4th County fireworks celebration has also been canceled.

The reason?

ICE.

The City of Bells Gardens has, out of justified concern for their citizens, cancelled their public celebration of our country’s birth.

The concern is totally justified.

The Big Ugly Bill just past by Congress and which will be signed by Trump today, will give more money to ICE than to all the federal prisons. More than the FBI. More than all the federal law enforcement agencies combined.

Today in Bell Gardens the streets are empty, the parks are empty and the shops are closed.

Residents will lie low.

Yesterday, a few blocks from where I live now, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of South Slope, on the other side of the country from Bell Gardens. ICE raided a local car wash.

*No AI was used in the writing of this post. All mistakes are human.