“The cops are here!” Carmen yells as she points at the bus parked 60 yards away at a gas station near Wichita, Kansas. She tries to tell the 30 fellow bus riders inside the convenience store to stay there.
Everyone panics, again. The cops turn out to be a patrol car that stopped to get gas.
“We are so paranoid,” says Carmen, a 14-year-old rider from Oakland, after realizing the situation.
The bus from Washington, D.C. back home to San Francisco has gone from being a bus on a historic ride to march for immigration reform, to being one in which riders feel like outlaws.
Police pull the bus over in St. Louis at 1:20 p.m. for allegedly transporting a person who smoked marijuana in a Burger King bathroom in Mt. Vernon, Ill.
Officers let the bus go but warn the driver that he could be pulled over again. Crossing state lines with marijuana, the officer adds, is considered a federal felony.
A Burger King employee had called the police and said that someone in the bus with a golden jacket was the culprit.
There are tears, panic and fear that there will be an ICE raid when the bus crosses Missouri to Kansas.
The organizers ask the suspect to turn themselves in because they could jeopardize those who are undocumented. No one comes forward and it becomes increasingly clear that no one in the bus smoked marijuana at the Burger King.
Pat Oliver, a rider who joined the trip in Denver, says she saw the person with that jacket, but the person was not a rider on the bus.
“I feel like they defamed us,” Ramiro Montoya says. Some of the riders had complained earlier about the rude service at the Burger King.
As we arrive in Kansas City, Miss., right at the border with Kansas City, Kan., a group of clergy and legal counsel from the PICO network await us.
After serving sandwiches, pizza and juice, they offer a prayer. A caravan of seven vehicles, including an immigration lawyer, follow behind the bus.
“It’s becoming like a religious experience,” says Julio, a bus rider from Long Beach. “Why? Because the fact that you needed sanctuary in the road.”
Once across state line cheers erupt. No police, no ICE agents filling the bus and it feels like the worst is over, but the paranoia that consumes immigrants — and had largely been gone for most of the trip — persists.
The farther we get from Kansas, the happier everyone feels.
People in the back, known as the adult area, sing Spanish classic songs for more an hour as the bus races across the Southwest.
The worry now is if the bus will make it in time for the rally in San Francisco at 4:00 p.m. Google maps estimates the arrival at 10 p.m.
