Saint Vengeance: The Bloody Compassion of Mother Cabrini on the Fourth of July

“Cabrini immigrant Services, how may I help you today?”

That’s how most of the stories around here start. With a phone call. “How do I renew my Green Card?” “Can you help me get a legal work permit in the US?” Or, too often, “My husband has disappeared. Can you help me find him?” On Saturday, July 4th, 2026, Natacha answered the phone, but the caller didn’t say any of those things. They didn’t say anything at all. She waited a beat and tried again.

“Cabrini immigrant Services, ¿En qué puedo ayudarle hoy?”

Father Juan, celebrant of Sunday Mass at the Shrine, smiled at her encouragingly. “Her Spanish is so good,” he half-whispered to me, before clapping me on the back and hustling out of the office, like the busy bee he was.

Natacha joined us last week. Haitian-American with dual citizenship, athletic, slender, I’d guess mid 40s? She lived way out in Canarsie, at just about the opposite end of the New York City map from where we were, in Washington Heights. We’re in upper Manhattan, a hundred blocks north of the Upper West Side. Getting up here in the middle of this heat wave must have been a real viacrucis for her, but we needed Creole speakers, and praise God, she showed up for us.

My name is Luis Fernandez Junior, by the way, I’m 19. Born and raised in the Heights. Father Juan got me the job a little less than a year ago.

Natacha looked at the receiver, and back up at me again, making a “there’s no one there” face. I spun my finger in a circle, gesturing for her to ask again. Even before ICE got supercharged into an unregulated army of racist body snatchers, it was pretty common for people calling an immigrant services center to get nervous before speaking on the phone. Nowadays, people are terrified. So we wait a beat. It sometimes takes a few calls for people to screw up the courage to say something.

We had a skeleton crew in the building that day, just me, Natacha, and Father Juan, who technically had the day off, but you couldn’t keep him away if you tried. It was the Fourth of July, and a Saturday, but The Supreme Court had cancelled Temporary Protected Status at the end of June, so while the media was waving the American flag and celebrating birthright citizenship being (temporarily) upheld, here in the real world, the hundred and sixty thousand or so Haitians who lived in New York City were in trouble. The ones who lost their protected status were now being directly targeted for deportation, and frankly, so were the ones who were Americans. ICE doesn’t care if you’re a citizen or not. If you’re the wrong shade of brown, in the wrong part of town, Jack, you could get yourself vanished. A lot of Haitians had TPS, so their questions came in Haitian Creole. That’s where Natacha came in. But whoever was on the line now wasn’t speaking Creole. They weren’t saying anything at all.

Natacha tried again. “¿Hola? ¿Me escucha?”

Something shifted. You could feel it in the air. I felt it roll over me like a wave of nausea. The caller on the phone was speaking, and it had gotten ugly.

Natacha bolted up in her chair. “You! You do NOT call here again! I call the police!” I stepped towards her, close enough to hear a hissing voice on the phone.  

“Bitch, we ARE the police.”

She slammed down the receiver. I swore under my breath. “Again?” I asked. Natacha nodded, composing herself. “Anything new this time?” She shook her head. “Same kaka. It’s da Fourth of July, Speak American, and a whole mess of ugly talk. They make me so angry, these ICE kochon-”  

“We don’t know that it’s ICE making those calls,” I interjected. “They could just be some Fox News pendejos on a long weekend with time on their hands.” Natacha shook her head. “I know his voice. He’s the one with the blue bandana.” I grimaced. I knew exactly who she was talking about.

We get a lot of calls here. Most are from immigrant families who need help. We hook them up with lawyers, social services, multilingual food pantries. We host “Know Your Rights” seminars. We also get a lot of hate, and yes, some of it comes from ICE agents. And I’m not some ACAB guy either. I like cops. Well, some cops. But these ICE guys? Nah. Ellos son unos pariguayos.

But what are we going to do? Tell them to stop? Say pretty please? We have a lot of lawyers around here, and we’ve mostly managed to keep ICE from coming onto the grounds. We see their SUVs, unmarked, double parked out on Fort Washington Avenue. They do it to intimidate. To scare off anyone who might take advantage of our help. Between you and me? These guys “disappear” people. Maybe they “get lost in the system,” but more likely they end up in the tall grass in the Meadowlands, across the bridge in the New Jersey, with a bullet in the back of the head. That’s what this country voted for, I guess. So that’s what they got.

Maria, our Social Worker, actually saw that ICE agent once, the one that Natacha thinks just called, the one with the blue bandana, calling us on a burner outside the building. She was on the phone listening to him spew hatred into his flip phone, while she looked right at him through the window. He looked right back at her and smiled. I’m not going to lie, it’s frightening. We act brave, but if these thugs step out of line, nobody punishes them. It’s bad.

BANG_BANG!
BANG_BANG_BANG_BANG!  
BANG_BANG_BANG!

We both jumped. It was only about 6PM but the fireworks were already starting outside. Ever since the pandemic, illegal fireworks have been very popular in the Heights. They were going off the night the Knicks won, and the joke was “So- do you think they knew the Knicks were playing?” We get fireworks every weekend summer night. But on the Fourth of July? It gets crazy uptown.

OK, hold up- I’m leaving out something pretty important here. Before I tell you what happened next, here’s hoping that like me, you grew up Catholic or you’re a New Yorker. If so, your basic, street-level tolerance for the kind of insanity that I need to lay out here might help you out.

And I’m Catholic NYC to the core. Son of Dominican immigrants, born and raised in this neighborhood. Graduated last year from All Hallows Catholic High School in the South Bronx. I took my TACHS at St Elizabeth’s on 187th, and got my first Holy Communion at the church of the same name across the street on Wadsworth. If you head west from there, go down the giant hill, past Key Food, a synagogue on your right, and then up another giant hill, you’ll find yourself here, at Cabrini Immigrant Services on Fort Washington Avenue.

CIS, baby, the opposite of I-C-E.

Father Juan says if I stay at home, save a little money, qualify for a scholarship, eventually, I could be off to law school. I like that plan, but right now, there’s no better place to learn about law than an immigration center. It’s a hard job, but an important one.

The Shrine, which our building is attached to, is called The Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini Shrine, and as I said, if you’re not from here, you may want to buckle up for this; it’s also the location of the physical remains of the body of Mother Cabrini, the Patron Saint of Immigrants.

I’m not kidding. Right down the hall there, past the gift shop.

Her relics (that’s what we Catholics call her physical body parts) are stored in the sanctuary, in a see-through glass and bronze reliquary casket. So yes, I’ll be very clear about this. The corpse of the first American Saint, an immigrant herself, has been on display for almost a century, in a quiet, New York City neighborhood only about a block and half away from a pretty solid Indian restaurant that has live jazz on the weekends. That is both extremely Catholic, and extremely New York. Her body was exhumed from her tomb in Chicago in the 1920s, and sent here, to her adopted city. And you know how that makes me feel, to be carrying on the mission of the Patron Saint of Immigrants on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America? It makes me feel PATRIOTIC.

Lemme know if you need a break, because there’s more.  A lot more.

Mother Cabrini’s entire body isn’t here in The Heights. Post-diviso, (which is exactly what it sounds like) the parts of her body, or “Relics of the Saint” were separated (I know) and distributed around the world.

Since the 1930’s, her right arm has been on display at the Shrine of St Frances Cabrini in Chicago. Her heart was sent to a chapel in Italy, and her right index finger is at the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colorado, the same town where they make Coors Beer. Her skull was sent to Rome, to the chapel of the Generalate of the Missionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the international motherhouse of the religious order she founded. But most of her body was placed here in the Heights, under a wax likeness that looks, well, an awful lot like a well-preserved dead body. Which is what it is. It’s impressive. And kind of terrifying. This is all on Google. Look it up if you want.

After Natacha hung up on our racist prank caller, I heard the front door chime, which meant someone had opened the door to the gift shop. It was probably Father Juan. It was almost seven and he might have set it off while locking up. Technically, we were open, but on the Fourth of July? In this heat? We weren’t expecting anyone.

The gift shop, where I do most of my work, when we aren’t slammed on the phones, is a trip. We get pilgrims who have come to venerate Mother Cabrini’s relics from all over the world, and they want something to remember her by. We sell statues of Mother Cabrini, biographies of Mother Cabrini, children’s books about Mother Cabrini, Rosaries, pocket tokens, prayer cards, DVDs, all kinds of devotionals, holy water bottles, pendants, mirrors, prayer books, even Mother Cabrini socks. I got a pair myself. They’re blue.

I walked through the back entrance of the shop, behind the counter, and was surprised to see an older Haitian woman on her knees, in the middle of the floor.  She was holding a red Target shopping bag in her lap and praying in Creole.

“Manman Cabrini! Entèsede pou fanmi migran ki separe youn ak lòt, pwoteje yo kont eksplwatasyon, epi kenbe yo an sekirite!”

She was repeating it over and over again, holding the Target bag tightly.

“Manman Cabrini! Entèsede pou fanmi migran ki separe youn ak lòt, pwoteje yo kont eksplwatasyon, epi kenbe yo an sekirite!”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

She ignored me, repeating her prayer even louder.

“Manman Cabrini! Entèsede pou fanmi migran ki separe youn ak lòt, pwoteje yo kont eksplwatasyon, epi kenbe yo an sekirite!”

I was going to need Natacha. “I’ll be right back, ma’am. I have someone who speaks Creol-”

I heard the chime of the front door again and my blood ran cold. Four ICE agents entered the shop in military formation. Three men and one woman, all white, all masked. No badges. The guy in the front wore a blue bandana. Fuck. That guy, I knew.

“US IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, OFFICIAL BUSINESS!” one of them shouted through a face covering. “GET ON THE GROUND, NOW!” This was a planned raid. In a church. On the Fourth of July.  What was the matter with these people?

“You can’t be here!” I shouted. “This is a house of God!”

Legally, of course, that meant nothing. The new administration had removed the law banning immigration enforcement from making arrests in places of worship, but I was hoping that maybe they didn’t know that.

The woman, oddly calm, held the red Target bag tightly. The agents swept through the gift shop, securing the entry points, with a precision I didn’t normally associate with ICE. A total of six agents filed into the shop, masks up, weapons out.

The Haitan woman turned to me directly and said “Mwen gen kè Manman Cabrini! Mwen gen kè Manman Cabrini!” Whatever she was saying, the agents didn’t like it.

“QUIET!” shouted Blue Bandana, kicking her in the back. She sprawled into a bookshelf and another agent zip tied her hands behind her. Three more ICE agents came in the back entrance. They were leading Father Juan and Natatcha, who were also zip tied. Father Juan’s head was bleeding, and he had a large bruise under his eye.

I spoke as clearly and loudly as I could.

“You have entered a house of worship. Do you have a judicial warrant signed by a judge? May I have your names and badge numbers?”

Stupidly, I reached for my phone, and the agent closest to me pointed a handgun at my head. “No phones,” he said.  He was a fat bastard, wearing a gaiter face covering, a Yankees hat and sunglasses. I tried to focus on features that might identify him later, but it wasn’t easy. I mean, he was wearing a Korn T-shirt. He slapped the phone out of my hand. It clattered to the ground, and the agent with the blue bandana stepped on it, crushing the screen.

“Oops,” he said, through his face covering.

The fat one in the Korn shirt laughed, but kept his gun on me.

I looked up behind the door and my stomach went into my throat. The security camera was gone. Whatever these guys were doing, it was planned in advance, and they didn’t want it on camera.  

This was bad.

BANG_BANG_BANG!

More fireworks outside. It would be dark soon, and the fireworks were coming faster. The female ICE agent closed the front door of the gift shop and locked it. Her face was covered by what looked like an 2020-era COVID mask, with a picture of The Tasmanian Devil’s grinning face on it. You know, from Looney Toons? It was a terrifying contrast. Who acts this way?

Blue Bandana scanned the area. He had a muscular frame and a military attitude. He focused on me. “Zip tie him. Away from the windows. Inside. Move!”

Two of the beefier paramilitary cosplayers slammed me against the counter, sending several Mother Cabrini prayer candles flying, where they smashed on the ground. They spun me around and zip tied my hands.The plastic was cutting into my wrists.

The Haitian woman was huddled up against a bookshelf. She’d managed to get the Target bag back, and with her arms still zip tied, was clutching it behind her back, where the agents couldn’t see. She stared up at Natacha and in a loud stage whisper, hissed to her the same thing she had said to me. “Mwen gen kè Manman Cabrini.” Natacha’s eyes widened. The woman repeated it. “Mwen gen kè Manman Cabrini.”

They lined us up and marched us down the hallway, away from the windows. We took a right into the sanctuary. Natacha nudged me.

“Who is that woman?”

“I have no idea,” I replied. “What’s she saying?”

Natatcha’s voice was like iron.

“She’s saying… ‘I have the heart of Mother Cabrini.'’’

I looked from the Target bag, back to the front of the sanctuary, where Mother Cabrini’s body lay in repose. Her heart was supposed to be in a chapel in Rome, not four feet away from me, in a shopping bag from Target. I looked back at Mother Cabrini’s body in the reliquary. In life, she had certainly crossed paths with many who were hostile to immigrants. If she were in my place, right here, what would she do now? In the face of armed, unaccountable men? I said a silent prayer, cleared my throat, and spoke aloud again.

“We are now entering a private area of this house of worship. You have not been given permission to enter this area. I demand to see a judicial warran-”

BANGBANGBANGBANG!

It wasn’t fireworks.

Natacha’s head jerked back in front of me, splattering blood all over the stained glass portrait of Mother Cabrini that adorned the door to the sanctuary. Her body collapsed in a heap.

“DIOS MIO, NO!” screamed Father Juan.  

Blue Bandana turned the still smoking muzzle of his firearm at me. “Wow,” he said. “It seems we can’t go five minutes around this shithole neighborhood without somebody shooting off fireworks. Were you saying something?”

Then, I knew. They had chosen this night BECAUSE of the fireworks. They could shoot anyone they wanted, and it wouldn’t raise alarm. And now, Natacha was dead. For the crime of helping people. My entire body went numb.

The rest of the ICE agents secured the sanctuary, the same way they had the gift shop, like paramilitary soldiers sweeping and clearing a room in Iraq. I wanted to throw up. What did they want with us?

Blue Bandana set up shop at the front of the Sanctuary, his back to Mother Cabrini’s reliquary.

“My name is Agent Cheney,” he said, holstering his pistol on his chest and lowering his bandana, revealing a reddish goatee and a juvenile smirk. “As you may have surmised by now, I am in charge here. Reagan, Lincoln, can you secure that body please?” Two other agents moved to Natacha’s lifeless body. They lifted her out of the pool of blood, carrying her by the ankles and armpits, and took her out of the sanctuary. Horrified, I wrenched my gaze away from the gory scene and found myself staring directly into the face of the stained glass portrait of Mother Cabrini, her stoic face splattered with Natacha’s blood.

“You, you, and you,” Cheney said, pointing to the Haitian woman, Father Juan and me. “Come over here.” A barrage of fireworks went off outside, and we dropped to the ground. Cheney laughed. “Wow- y’all are jumpy tonight! Do you not like fireworks? It’s the Fourth of July!” He pointed, and we filed into a pew in the middle of the sanctuary. Inside her glass coffin, Mother Cabrini’s face was shining. Cheney yelled to another agent. “Nixon- can you double check the situation outside?” The agent nodded, and exited the sanctuary.

I felt a tap on my arm. It was Father Juan. “They're using code names,” he whispered in Spanish. “That’s good. If they intended to kill us all they wouldn’t bother.”

“Listen up!” bellowed Cheney, his blue bandana now loosely around his neck. “Here’s how this goes down.” He pointed at Father Juan. “Agent Ford is going to escort this priest to the basement, or whichever room in this building that he’s harboring illegals, and then we’re going to decide what happens next.”

Father Juan’s face flushed. “I have NO idea what you are talking about!” I love Father Juan, but he’s a terrible liar. Still, while I wouldn’t object to us hiding people from ICE, if it was really happening, it was news to me.

“We know they’re here, padre,” said Cheney, putting a hand on his pistol. “And if you don’t go and get them, RIGHT NOW, maybe another round of fireworks goes off around here.” He pulled his gun and pointed it directly at the Haitian woman’s head. She didn’t flinch.

“No! Señor. No. Please.” A male voice came from a side door to the sanctuary. Every agent instantly trained their weapons at it. “Hold your fire!” shouted Cheney. “C’mon out now,” he said. “That’s it.”

A Mexican man, (I could tell from the accent) wearing a backwards baseball cap and a dirty white tank top stepped forward, his hands in the air. “We’re here. Nosotros estamos aqui.” He stepped out of the side door, into the sanctuary, followed by about 14 men and women, also Mexicans, if I had to guess, but did it really matter?  At a gesture from Cheney, the agents moved quickly, zip tying their hands and forcing them to their knees.

Before I knew it, the Haitian woman was running.

She’d somehow gotten loose of her zip ties, and, holding the Target bag like a football, broke left out of our pew and headed down the center aisle of the sanctuary, straight for Cheney, who was blocking the reliquary of Mother Cabrini. Pistol shots from several different agents rang out, cutting her down. She collapsed at Cheney’s feet.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Cheney to the dying woman.

“Manman Cabrini! Leve kanpe! LEVE KANPE!” she sputtered, thrusting the Target bag before her. I’d never spoken a word of Creole, but somehow… I understood. She was saying “MOTHER CABRINI…RISE.”

“Fun’s over,” said Cheney.  He pulled out his firearm and shot her in the head. The gunshot echoed through the sanctuary.

“Now! Ladies and gentlemen, hombres and niños,” he bellowed. “If we have had the last of this unpleasantness, here is how this is going to work.” He paced to the front of the Sanctuary. We are all going to andalay, out of this building, across the courtyard, where your chariots await.”

The other agents started putting bags over the heads of the men and women. Cheney continued. “This is to be done quickly, and quietly, while the rest of this neighborhood is celebrating the founding of the greatest country in the world, a country by the way, which will be immediately improved by not having any of you fucking shitbirds living in it. Am I crystal?”

Before I knew it, Father Juan was on his feet, hands still bound, shaking with rage. With a power that I had never heard from him before, his voice thundered through the Sanctuary:

“HOW DARE YOU DEFILE THE RESTING PLACE OF THE AMERICAN PATRON SAINT OF IMMIGRANTS, THE HOLY VIRGIN FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI?!”

Two agents advanced forward on Father Juan, long guns in hand. They looked to Cheney, who held up his hand, telling them to wait. He wanted to hear this.

“SHAME ON YOU FOR YOUR EVIL ACTS IN THE PRESENCE OF THE RELICS OF HER PHYSICAL BODY! THERE ARE AMERICAN CITIZENS HERE!  RELEASE US NOW IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST THE REDEEMER!”

Cheney gestured. The butt of a long gun from one of the agents hit Father Juan in the back of the head. He went down.

Cheney looked back at the reliquary coffin, and then back at me. “Wait,” he said. “Are you telling me that is an actual… body?” Stonefaced, I nodded assent. “Well!” said Cheney. “That, I have to see.” He turned around, squatted, and looked directly into the face of Mother Cabrini. “This dead nun is the patron saint of…immigrants?”

I nodded again.

“And she’s…a virgin?” Crude laughter echoed through the sanctuary. Cheney looked back and forth, a disgusting smile spreading across his face. “Well, I wonder if we can’t open up that coffin and maybe do her a little favor? Whaddya say, Eisenhower?” he said to the agent positioned to his left, slapping his hand on the lid of the coffin, “You wanna jump this bitch’s bones?”

The one he called Eisenhower walked down the center aisle, comically unbuckling his pants to more juvenile laughter. He threw open the lid of the coffin.

What happened next, I can’t rightly explain, but in a single flex, the zip ties that bound my hands were… gone. I held my hands above my head and the red Target bag, still laying near the body of the Haitian woman flew into my hands.

The voice that came from me was not my own.

“Manman Cabrini! Leve kanpe!"

The ICE agents turned to me. The voice came again from me, louder, and again, it was not me doing it.

“MANMAN CABRINI LEVE KANPE!”

The blood-spattered stained glass portrait of Mother Cabrini shattered. The Target bag was hot in my hands. Something was inside it, about the size of an onion. I yelled once more, but  this time, it was from me. This time, it was in English:

“MOTHER CABRINI…RISE!”