Hundreds of community members gathered outside Overland City Hall on Sunday night to mourn the killings of former Overland residents Glendy González de la Cruz and Nixon Perez Paz in Guatemala.
The couple was found bound and shot dead in a sugarcane field weeks after González de la Cruz took her three young daughters and rejoined her husband Nixon following his ICE deportation last year.
A spokesperson for the federal agency told St. Louis Public Radio that he was deported for being in the U.S. without legal status. Guatemalan law enforcement said they did not immediately know who the assailants were, nor their motives for the killings.
"We need pathways to citizenship, but a pathway to better citizenship for us all," said Yery Castillo, a friend of González de la Cruz and an organizer with Fuerza, a St. Louis-based immigrant rights group that organized the vigil. "Citizenship that provides us access to quality affordable healthcare, clean, safe housing and good-quality union jobs."
The couple's eldest daughters were both students in the Ritenour School District. Superintendent Chris Kilbride said teachers in his district have attempted to keep providing high-quality education, despite the significant fear and uncertainty around increases in federal immigration enforcement.
"It's a tragedy," he said ahead of his public remarks. "We just need to not normalize that we have teachers going to [detention centers] to connect with students detained with their families. That's not normal for educators."
Remembering loved ones
![Juana Luz Alvarado, center, falls to her knees while mourning former Overland residents Glendy González de la Cruz and Nixon Pérez Paz during a vigil outside Overland City Hall on Sunday. The couple was found shot to death in Guatemala after González de la Cruz returned there to reunite with her husband following his deportation, despite having an active asylum case. "Glendy was a good person," she said, adding that her soul was broken when she heard of her friend's killing. "She was my only friend here. […] We want justice, please, someone help us. It isn't right they did this to her."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/aedcce2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/840x560!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F4e%2Fcd%2Fb053b9334c49a5ae22b255605de4%2F080226-bm-vigil-final-2.jpg)
Olga Pérez Paz, Nixon's sister, attended the vigil alongside her daughter and grandson. She collapsed into a friend's arms after the remarks, tears streaming from her face.
"I can't think right now, I don't have the words," she said following the remarks. "I'm happy to see that [Nixon and Glendy] have so much support here."
Rolando Pérez Paz told STLPR last week that his brother and González de la Cruz loved spending time with their family, going to local parks and being devoted parishioners at their local church.
"We have to figure out what to do with the children," he said in Spanish. "The reason we left [for the U.S.] was to provide for our family—to pay for their education and ensure that, down the road, they could make something of themselves."
Liliana Gopar was one of González de la Cruz's best friends.
The 31-year-old mother of three had met González de la Cruz years ago, after realizing their daughters were in the same classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The kids would go over to my house, or my daughter would go over to her house, and that's how we started our friendship," Gopar told STLPR in an exclusive interview. "Since then, our friendship grew. There's so many things, so many memories with her."
Tears welled in Gopar's eyes as she reminisced on their kids' sleepovers, sharing their first communion at All Souls Catholic Church and the day last spring when her friend's husband, Pérez Paz, had been detained by ICE near their Overland home in a pre-dawn stop.
Challenges abounded after Gopar and immigration advocates attempted to recover Nixon's wallet, which they said had roughly $1,000 in it, crucial funds for González de la Cruz to pay her rent. But when they got to Rolla, where he was being held and retrieved the wallet, there was nothing in it.
"She never cried. She was the strongest girl out there, but I felt for her because she was pregnant, about to give birth," she said. "It was hard."
González de la Cruz would go on to give birth to her youngest child, Giovanni, shortly after but almost immediately returned to work her early-morning job at a factory and cleaning offices in the afternoon. Gopar said she continued for months until it was too much to handle.
"I think she was scared; she told me multiple times," Gopar said, pointing to González de la Cruz signing a power of attorney over her daughters shortly before her leaving. She begged her: "'Whatever happens, take my girls.'"
Despite Gopar's pleas for her to stay in the U.S. and work through her asylum case, the mounting living costs, heartache from being away from her husband, and fears of being detained and separated from her three young daughters were driving her back to Guatemala — and she couldn't be convinced otherwise, Gopar said.
Gopar recalled going to González de la Cruz's house late at night, shortly before leaving the country, to give her youngest daughter, Marisol, a Lilo and Stitch blanket (her favorite character) and a small saint to protect Glendy on her journey back to Central America. The two friends embraced and wept outside the Guatemalan woman's Overland home.
"I said: I love you. Don't ever forget me," recalled Gopar. "She said I love you too, which was very rare for us Hispanics because it's very hard for us to show emotion, but I did love her so much."
Weeks after taking her three daughters to rejoin their father in Guatemala, the couple was found bound and killed in a sugar cane field. Community members found Giovanni, the couple's 14-month-old daughter, crying beside her mother's body.
"If [ICE] wouldn't have stopped them, none of this would have happened," said Gopar. "These children would be here, happy without the pain of losing both parents and it just angers me because this government did this to them."
The U.S. immigration system is broken and should be reformed to allow immigrants an equitable pathway to citizenship, Gopar said. She added that the administration's immigration enforcement machine unjustly targets hardworking, innocent people.
"We're not all criminals. She wasn't a criminal. She was a mother, a hardworking mother, a great friend, a great neighbor, and she didn't deserve this," said Gopar. "It's them to blame because they did this to her. Her fear of walking out, getting pulled over, being separated from her children, and being away from her husband is their fault."
Elected officials weigh in
Elected officials at the vigil decried the killings and unannounced federal immigration enforcement in the north St. Louis County community.
Overland Mayor Marty Little was met with boisterous cheers after reassuring the crowd that the city will not sign a 287(g) agreement to work with ICE. Little previously told STLPR that he and the city's police department were not informed about the ICE operation last year that landed Pérez Paz in federal custody and later deported.
"With a population that is largely growing due to immigrant families, I don't think signing a 287(g) agreement provides them any comfort or safety," he said. "We can not risk the safety of those going through the proper channels to have the same fate as Nixon and Glendy."
Jake Zimmerman, St. Louis County's auditor who is running for county executive, said if he is elected, he would push north St. Louis County municipalities to follow the way of Overland and not have agreements with ICE.
"Under my watch, the St. Louis County Police will never sign a 287(g) agreement," he said. "I would like leaders from all parties and all walks of life throughout this community to stand up and say, 'Hell no,' to those agreements so we don't have another innocent life lost like this one."
Zimmerman said he believed the only solution to increase the St. Louis region's population is to embrace immigrant growth — as it did with Bosnian refugee resettlement.
"We must be prepared to open our doors and welcome our neighbors and be the same St. Louis ... that welcomed my grandparents and great grandparents when they came from another country," he said. "This story is personal from me and I think it should be personal from all walks of life in this community."
Missouri state Sen. Brian Williams, who is running against Zimmerman for the open seat, attended the vigil but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Wesley Bell, the Democratic congressman facing former Rep. Cori Bush in Tuesday's primary for Missouri's 1st District, said if he is reelected and Democrats regain control of Congress, he would ensure investigations are launched against the immigration agency while working to dismantle it.
"Having a majority lets us control the floor and defund ICE," he said. "Nixon should be getting ready for work. Glendy should be tucking their daughters into bed. It's heartbreaking and enraging."
In a recent joint appearance with Bush, Bell told STLPR that the federal immigration agency should be "abolished and stripped for parts." Throughout his freshman term, Bell regularly joined the majority of House Democrats in voting against GOP-led measures to expand the power of immigration agencies—including expanding penalties for unlawful entry.
Bell received criticism from progressives for signing onto a June 2025 symbolic resolution condemning antisemitism and an attempted attack on Jewish people in Boulder, Colorado. The measure included language expressing "gratitude" to ICE amid the agency's violent clashes with protesters in Los Angeles.
Bush shared similar sentiments about dismantling the agency, but contended it will take intentional organizing.
"It's more to it than just waiting for a vote to happen. It's more to it than just asking the community what should you do," she said. "I can speak out for humanity, regardless of who it is, and I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do that."
The former congresswoman recently told STLPR that immigration enforcement efforts should be decentralized, ICE detention centers should be closed, and funding for those should be redirected to social services. While in Congress, Bush cosponsored several bills in attempts of reforming the U.S. immigration system and pushed back on the Biden administration's Title 42 expulsions — measures that 100 congressional Democrats argued caused discriminatory treatment of Black migrants, particularly Haitians.
Missouri State Rep. Ray Reed, D-Brentwood, said the community should remember that behind every immigration case is a human story whose lives can be forever changed by the decisions governments make.
"America has always been a nation of both laws and values. We can uphold the rule of law while never losing sight of our common humanity," he wrote in a statement ahead of the vigil. "Those principles are not in conflict. In fact, they are strongest when they exist together."
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