Johana Lopez asked her son not to go out that night.

On Saturday, Nov. 8, 17-year-old Julio Lopez wanted to attend a quinceañera, a traditional Latin American celebration of a girl’s 15th birthday, with some of his friends.

“Kids should listen to their parents,” Johana Lopez said in Spanish through her tears. “Because when I told him not to go out, it wasn’t because I was a bad parent, but because you want to prevent this. I wanted to avoid this pain.”

Her son left nonetheless. On the return trip home, a tragic crash took his life and the lives of Enrique Rodriguez Sabas, 17, and Leyner Velasquez, 13, upending a tight-knit immigrant community already enduring immigration raids that are splitting up families.

All three were passengers in a pickup truck when the driver, also 17, failed t

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