You can’t call Coldwater a one-stoplight town because it doesn’t have one. But on Main Street after sunset, rows of headlights start to glow.
“Throw your hazards on, everybody!” a man yells in the dark to a gathering crowd in early June. Horns honk, lights blink, and the whooping and hollering start. Someone brings an American flag.
Joe Ceballos, a two-time mayor, is coming home after three weeks in detention several counties away. He is a Kansan in a town of ruby-red politics and amber waves of grain. But on paper, he is not American. That made it illegal for him to vote, as the state says he did many times.
Why We Wrote This
A former two-time Kansas mayor is facing deportation. Some supporters of President Donald Trump are wrestling with the implications of immigration enforcement that is broader, they say, than what they voted for or expected.
He pleaded guilty this spring to election-related state crimes and faced a fine but no jail – a relief to him and his supporters. Then things escalated: detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in May and the start of deportation proceedings.
Many locals defend the green-card holder from Mexico. They call his wrongful ballot-casting an honest mistake, outweighed by his hard work and heart. Barry Loveall, a retired pig farmer who came to greet “Joe,” says he wouldn’t care if his friend were from outer space.
“He’s not afraid to roll up his sleeves and jump in a ditch with you. ... He fixed my sewer pipe,” Mr. Loveall says. “Far as I’m concerned, best man I know.”
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, more and more Americans have learned that their neighbors are deportable. The government is rounding up far more than the murderers and rapists it said it would be targeting. Immigrants who have lived in the United States lawfully for years are among them.
Support for Mr. Trump here runs deep, in a county that he carried in 2024 with 83% of the vote. Many Trump supporters, including Mr. Ceballos, don’t necessarily see the former mayor’s case in conflict with their politics. No, this isn’t what they voted for, they say. Instead, those Republicans see Mr. Ceballos’ story as an exception to the rule and hope an immigration judge agrees.
Mr. Ceballos’ legal team is working to keep his green card and avoid deportation. Ironically, Kansas, a GOP stronghold, has led the charge against immigrants voting illegally, an effort earlier rebuked by federal courts. The Trump administration has amplified the real but statistically tiny concern. This month, the Department of Homeland Security called on ICE to pursue stiffer penalties – including deportation – because such voting “dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy.”
So what happens when the “best man” you know is a rallying cry for your party’s base? And worse, could be expelled?
On Coldwater’s Main Street, a red pickup truck appears with Mr. Ceballos inside. A friend approaches with a “We Love You, Joe!!” sign as the horns and sirens swell.
A hand reaches out the truck window and waves.
Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor
A portrait of Joe Ceballos, who graduated from South Central High School in Coldwater, Kansas, in 1991, still hangs at the school. Mr. Ceballos came to the United States when he was 4 years old, and has had a green card for 36 years.
Small town life
In the distance, wind turbines somersault in place. Closer in, pumpjacks nod at the earth, coaxing crude oil out. It’s been a bad year for wheat, thanks to fickle rain in south-central Kansas. A church marquee calls for harvest prayers. The loudest sound in Coldwater is the occasional grunt of semitrucks down U.S. 183, which splits the town of hundreds in half.
When the local paper was first printed in 1884, it called the county home to “some 1,000 honest, contented and happy people.”
In its inaugural edition, The Western Star wrote of “immigrants that daily flock” into Coldwater, “dusty and hungry looking.” The paper forecast their upward mobility, reckoning that those newcomers would, in a couple of years, own good farms. Then, their grandchildren would attend college and go on to “fill positions of honor and trust.”
As far as Mr. Ceballos can recall, he’s always been “Joe.”
Born José, he says his family brought him to the United States at age 4. His stepfather’s itinerant work meant a lot of moving around. In the 1980s, he says, a Texas ranching family that employed the teenage Mr. Ceballos brought him to Coldwater.
His senior photo still hangs in the high school, part of the class of 1991. His special ed teacher, Gail Boisseau, says he was placed in her class because of his gaps in formal learning, but quickly caught up. During one of her field trips to the county clerk’s office, an official encouraged him, then over 18, to register to vote. He says he did.
There’s a wrinkle to that story told around town. The current county clerk says her records show that the Republican first registered to vote se…
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