ST. LOUIS — Giovanni Gonzalez de la Cruz was born in May last year in St. Louis.

As a citizen, her future could take a remarkably different path than that of her immigrant parents, who fled poverty and violence in Central America.

Her mom, Glendy Marisol Gonzalez de la Cruz, 25, worked two factory jobs in St. Louis, mostly in fruit packing. She returned to work days after giving birth. Glendy and her three daughters, including little Giovanni, lived in Overland.

She was waiting for her asylum hearing in 2027, according to a spokesman with Fuerza, a community organizing project under the Missouri Workers Center that advocates for immigrants in the St. Louis region.

Giovanni's father, Nixon Giovanni Perez Paz, 43, wasn't there to see his youngest daughter's birth. He had been picked up by ICE in April 2025 on the way to a roofing job and was deported that same month to Guatemala. He was undocumented.

An ICE spokesperson told reporter Brian Munoz with St. Louis Public Radio that Perez Paz had been convicted twice for drunken driving in Overland and put on four years' probation. No drunken-driving records for him appear in Missouri's court database.

Glendy was nine months pregnant when her husband was deported. She couldn't afford the rent on her own, and she worried about being separated from her daughters. She self-deported to Guatemala a few weeks ago, on June 17, to reunite her family.

I wonder how desperate and scared she must have felt to take her girls — ages 11, 5 and 1 — back to a place where her life could be in danger.

Her friend, Darlin Vasquez, of St. Louis, explained through a translator the intense fear the young mother felt. Glendy financially supported her family back home, and she went back knowing she would no longer be able to help them. But that fear was overshadowed by a bigger one — what would happen to her daughters and who would take care of them if she was picked up by ICE, despite her upcoming court date.

“She was a very loving mom,” Vasquez said. “Even though she was very busy, working two jobs, she always made time for her daughters.”

The women met through a neighbor and would run into one another at the elementary school their children attended. Vasquez describes the girls as “very respectful, very kind, very loving.”

The news reports of what happened next read like a scene from a horror film: Giovanni, a 14-month-old baby, was found in a sugar cane field in southern Guatemala, suffering from dehydration and crying next to her mother's body. Her parents had been gagged, bound at their hands and feet, and shot to death.

How long had Giovanni been out there crying? What had she witnessed? What would become of the orphaned children?

Vasquez said the community is anguished and angry knowing their friend would be alive if not for the current administration’s policies, which have affected people seeking asylum, trying to work and trying to give their children a better life.

Regardless of one's position on our country's broken immigration system, surely any human would find this baby's circumstances tragic and heart-wrenching.

Actually, many Americans reacted with callousness. Scrolling through responses to the news, you'll find comments cheering the deportation that eventually led to two dead parents and three orphaned girls.

Thousands of comments — at least some of them actual people and not bots — responded on Facebook with posts like: "Don't care,"; "What is the real story [...] poor parent choices,"; "I mean, clearly, they weren't meant to be here at any point,"; "Not my problem, come legally."

But there's also a different group of commenters — those who see the family as humans, as neighbors worthy of dignity and respect. In fact, a vigil to honor the family is scheduled for 6 p.m. Sunday outside Overland City Hall, 9119 Lackland Road.

Jennifer Morales posted in the Facebook comments that she had helped the family in the past.

"I would have never imagined this would be the kind of update I would be reading. For those of you assuming that this family didn't do things the 'right way,' you are incorrect," she wrote. "This poor family fled from violence to the U.S. and it betrayed them ... I'm saddened and in disbelief at the inhumane and cruel comments from other parents and even old Ritenour employees in this forum.”

What happens in a country to lead to such divergent responses to the brutal murder of two parents? It's more than just the absence of basic empathy; it's outright cruelty.

A look at American history — especially the parts this administration doesn't want anyone to hear or read about — reveals a longstanding pattern of how some white people have viewed the suffering and murder of their nonwhite countrymen. They are the ones who attended lynchings of Black men as celebrated social events. The ones who threw rocks at Black children trying to attend previously segregated schools. The ones who ignore — or far worse, justify — the countless children maimed and killed overseas by American bombs.

People behave this way if they see others as less than human.

They don't see Giovanni as a St. Louisan, as one of ours.

They see a baby crying over her dead parents as a chance to score points in a debate.

The tragic and avoidable deaths of two people become just the latest flash point in our angry fight over immigration.

Giovanni's family deserved better.

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