n increasing numbers, Hispanic immigrants are putting down roots in the Roanoke Valley. They're pouring concrete, opening hair salons and filling classrooms. Some employers, meanwhile, are attributing their success to this new labor pool. In this occasional series, The Roanoke Times explores the local impact of the national debate about immigration.
During a busy Friday night dinner waiter Jesus Malaga serves an armload of food to their Anglo customers. Malaga came to America four years ago from Mexico and, like many Mexican immigrants in Roanoke, first landed a job at El Rodeo.
'It's in God's hands'
ohemi Cedillo didn’t know how to find her 16-year-old son, Melvin.
She hadn’t heard his voice in weeks, since the night the “coyote” smuggler she’d hired to bring him to Roanoke called to say they were somewhere in the Texas desert.
Audio gallery 
Outside her Roanoke County trailer, Nohemi Cedillo (left, white shirt), an illegal immigrant from Honduras, prays with her daughters, niece and Refugee and Immigration Services worker Vivian Sanchez-Jones (right, head bowed). “Let God’s will be done,” Nohemi said during the prayer for her son Melvin, who’s been missing since June 2005.Melvin was feverish and dehydrated, the coyote told her, and the group of Honduran migrants he was guiding — weary from their month-plus trek across Guatemala and Mexico — had to leave him behind or risk capture.
When Nohemi insisted the coyote put Melvin on the line, Melvin sounded distant and hoarse — not like her son at all.
“Mom, I think I’m dying,” he told her.
That was June 17, 2005.
See a map of Melvin's journey
Nohemi holds the last photograph taken of her son before he left Honduras in May 2005. Melvin had been traveling with a “coyote” smuggler and his younger sisters, Diana, 8 (left), and Julissa, 10, en route to Roanoke.Nohemi thought about driving to Texas herself to look for him. But what would happen to her other five children already in Roanoke if Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, got wind of her story? An illegal immigrant, she could be deported.
She thought about calling Roanoke County police to report a missing child, but what if they notified ICE?
If Melvin was still alive, she thought, he would have called her by now. Unless he was being detained somewhere — or worse.
Nohemi did the only thing she could do: She prayed for her son.
And then she called the only Hispanic person of power she knew: Vivian Sanchez-Jones.
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