Jim Beam column: Some illegals deserve a break

Published 7:04 am Saturday, January 24, 2026

Yes, I know it’s illegal for people to live in this country if they are undocumented. However, many of them have lived and worked here for  years and deserve an opportunity to become citizens.

Unfortunately, many of them have been rounded up by ICE and are shipped out of this country without that opportunity. Some are criminals, but not most of them.

Today, I’d like to talk to you about a Honduran. He’s Walter Francisco Cerrato Cabrera, a father of three with a wife in Houston. Here are some of the others in our story:

Anthony Tesvich, who is captain of the Rambler, the oyster boat on which Cerrato worked.

Robbie Campo of Campo’s Marina. He knew Cerrato and said he was “far from a troublemaker.”

Greg Perez, an oysterman who often employed Cerrato.

Brock Buras, another longtime oysterman.

You probably know by now that Cerrato is dead. He drowned a week before Christmas. The Advocate explained what happened.

That was when a white minivan pulled up to the docks in Hopedale in St. Bernard Parish, and four U.S. Coast Guard agents jumped out in black vests. Aboard the Rambler at the docks to off-load its haul, were two deckhands from Honduras who acted fast.

The younger of the two deckhands hid in the Rambler’s cabin. Cerrato, his co-worker, ducked into a cooler on the deck.

The agents approached the boat and the young deckhand rushed to see Cerrato and told him he would jump. Cerrato worried the agents would catch up with them, but after the younger man dropped into Bayou Loutre, the older one followed.

Water rushed into the young man’s boots and a strong current swept him away from the boat. He said by the time he reached the other bank and looked back to see Cerrato’s head sink beneath the water surface, “it was already too late.”

Cerrato drowned after 20 years working on oyster boats around Hopedale. He was 48.

The newspaper said his loss has stung the small community of oystermen and fishing guides down Hopedale Highway, raising concerns among some over the immigration crackdown.

Oystermen say the campaign against immigration has instilled fear among immigrants in an industry few Americans are eager to work.

Tesvich said, “They’ve been really spooked out ever since Border Patrol and ICE have been in New Orleans.” Tesvich described the Coast Guard van that pulled up as unmarked.

Perez said Cerrato had a work permit at one point but that it likely had lapsed. Perez said he knew Cerrato couldn’t swim, having fished him out of the water about five years ago.

The younger deckhand asked that his name not be published over fear of immigration officials

“Given how things are right now …  sometimes we react in a way that we don’t see the consequences of what’s going to happen,” he said. He credited his survival to a floating tree branch he used to buoy himself.

“I was drowning, literally drowning, swallowing water,” he said. He added that nobody saw them because they were blocked from view. “I was resigned to dying. I had given up.”

Campo said of Cerrato, “I sure hope God made him an angel, because he was a good, good guy. Anything you ask him: ‘I got it.’ Just an AI guy.” “Whoever needed a deckhand, he was just a hard working dude,” Campo said. He said Cerrato was bilingual.

“Walter made himself that way. I remember when he couldn’t speak a bit of English at all. He just picked up really quick,” Campo said.

Mary Hand, an attorney for the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office, said a record search found no warrants, attachments or criminal history for Cerrato.

Buras estimated that about 30 immigrant deckhands remain working in the community two decades after they arrived in the U.S. “They’re all good people, really good people. It’s a horrible thing,”

Buras said, “If they’re gone, I’m out of business, plain and simple.”

Campo said, “What you have with these Hondurans, or Mexicans or whatever, Guatemalans — those guys are here to make money and get back into (shore). I know they’re here illegally, you know what I mean,? But ICE got ’em so damn scared.”

The younger deckhand said of Cerrato: “He left a big void … everyone knew him.”

The deckhand said he’s considering leaving the country to follow the path of many friends in recent months who have returned home, rather than live in the U.S. in fear.

It’s a sad story.

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at jim.beam.press@gmail.com.