While the country is in the midst of increased U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence and overall safety concerns, multiple Día de los Muertos events were cancelled in the Bay Area this year.
Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a two-day holiday from Nov. 1-2 that connects the living and the dead, according to the Day of the Dead website.
Ofrendas (offerings) are set up, consisting of altars with marigolds, photos, lights, and favorite foods or drinks of deceased loved ones, and are set up to honor and allow them to visit the living world, according to the same website.
The Día de los Muertos celebration organized by R.I.S.E. Youth, a non-profit program for at-promise youth in Berkeley, was canceled on Oct. 24, a day before the event was scheduled, according to an Instagram post.
R.I.S.E. Youth Executive Director Adriana Betti said this is the first time the event has had to be cancelled since they started organizing these events over a decade ago.
“We were trying our best to go forward with everything. I had been working with the mayor and the sanctuary task force and we felt we had a pretty safe plan for our families to be present,” Betti said.
Berkeley is a sanctuary city, meaning that all City of Berkeley Departments and employees can not comply with ICE officers if they lack a valid judicial warrant, according to a Jan. 21, 2025, document from the City of Berkeley.
Betti said that while deployments in San Francisco and Alameda County were announced close to the event time, families started calling to say they didn’t feel comfortable attending.
President Donald J. Trump said he planned to send the National Guard to San Francisco in an interview with Fox News on Oct. 19, according to an Oct. 20 article from The Guardian.
However, Trump retracted the threats days later, according to an Oct. 23 Spartan Daily article.
“Friday night, we were actually finishing the altars and then we got more families that called in, and it got to a point that it was just too stressful,” Betti said. “So we sent out a letter to all the families.”
The letter sent out said that after hearing about the community’s safety concerns, they wanted to honor those and therefore canceled the event, according to a post made Oct. 24 on their Instagram, a day before the scheduled celebration.
“Little kids were talking about how excited they were to have their day out and it devastated me because none of them got to do it,” Betti said.
Another event was canceled this year, Día San José, an annual festival on Plaza de César Chávez, because of low funding and safety concerns, according to their website.
“The concept of being at an event and just looking over your shoulder, wondering if something’s going to happen and then possibly something happening and being taken in front of your children, it was just too much,” Betti said.
However, other Día de los Muertos events in the Bay Area continued as usual.
The School of Arts and Culture in Alum Rock hosted its Avenida de Altares event at the Mexican Heritage Plaza on Saturday.
Melissa Canela, deputy director of programs with the School of Arts and Culture, said this year was the largest turnout for the annual event, with over five thousand attendees estimated.
“We didn’t see a pause or halt (in attendance) at all. So that told us the community feels comfortable,” Canela said. “If anything, they might be yearning for some sort of community celebration because times have been really rough,”
Santa Clara County has an estimated 134,000 undocumented immigrants, according to a County of Santa Clara Latino Health Brief.
However, Carlos Morales, marketing manager for the School of Arts and Culture, said that this year they increased safety measures, implementing bag and handheld metal detector checks.
The School of Arts and Culture also posted a safety statement on Oct. 31, a day before the event, on their Instagram.
“We have a safe site policy to do our best to protect everyone. This means Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are not allowed to access private spaces without a judicial warrant – one that must be signed by a judge, not an ICE officer,” the statement read.
Regardless of immigration status, there are rights guaranteed by the Constitution, such as the right to stay silent and to a government-appointed lawyer, according to the American Civil Liberties Union
Morales said he believes this statement helped people feel even more comfortable attending the event.
“I guess a strategic approach to making families feel safe at the plaza was that we released our immigration statement a couple of days before the event,” Morales said.
The San José Multicultural Artists Guild (SJ MAG) had a smaller celebration this year for Día de los Muertos, but because of the death of longtime SJ MAG Director Arlene Sagun earlier in the year, according to an Oct. 4 article by The Mercury News.
Instead, they had an Art of Remembrance Exhibit at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library from Oct. 6 to Nov. 4 dedicated to Sagun and Día de los Muertos at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San José on Saturday, according to the SJ MAG website.
Bianca Ha, a fourth-year English student, attended an exhibit reception for SJ MAG’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library exhibition.
Ha said she enjoyed the event’s smaller format compared to larger festivals and felt safe in a more secluded setting.
“I appreciated that this was in the library because it’s a safe space for learning and was more personable than other events that are larger, because at a larger event you have to accommodate a lot of other things,” Ha said.
Erick Lopez, a third-year political science student, attended a Día de los Muertos event at Fruitvale Village in Oakland on Sunday.
The event had live music, food, altar exhibits, lowriders, Aztec rituals, rides, games and local artisan vendors, according to the Oakland Unity Council website.
Lopez said that police presence seemed the same as usual at the event and that he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
However, Lopez said he still felt some anxiety because of recent news about mass deportations.
Days before Día de los Muertos festivities began, an ICE arrest was reported at the Hall of Justice, 2.3 miles northeast of San José State University, in an Instagram post by the Rapid Response Network in Santa Clara County on Oct. 27.
“I still did have a small worry about whether ICE was to come to this event,” Lopez said. “That’s mainly because of the horrors I see on the internet of raids happening.”
Although events such as R.I.S.E. Youth’s in Berkeley were cancelled this year, Betti said they have already picked a date for next year’s event.
Día San José also announced that they hope to return in October next year, according to their website.
“It’s just really sad that something like this destroys the excitement of a kind of artistic and cultural involvement, and has to cancel an event for fear that a kid might be taken and left without a parent or something like that,” Betti said.
