American Dream died; this town got over it
GRANGER, Indiana: The goofy red sign off State Road 23 still says “Eddie’s Steak Shed,” just as it always has. The thankyou plaques for sponsoring the county Little League are still in the front entrance, alongside 15 years’ worth of stickers honouring the steaks as the area’s best.
But farther inside, most everything has changed in the year since the old owner was detained, then deported, as part of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants by a tough-talking new president.
Roberto Beristain, a former dishwasher who worked until he could afford to buy the place, is gone. In his place are refurbished wood-panelled walls, a bar with a granite counter and a new pork chop entree. Even the name is something snappier, sleeker - Eddie’s is now simply the Shed.
“I love what you did to the place!” Heather Pepper, 47, exclaimed to the bartender on a recent night. “It looks so updated, and it still feels local.”
As soon as he was detained, Beristain became a cause. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and immigration activists held him up as an example of what they said were exceedingly cruel new actions by President Donald Trump. They said his aggressive efforts would ensnare good people, rip apart families and lead vengeful communities to exact their furore at the ballot box - the same points Democrats have used to argue against deporting hundreds of thousands of “dreamers” and other endangered immigrants.
In Granger, though, there are few signs of lingering resentment. The calls threatening the restaurant stopped long ago, as did the ones in support of Beristain. A local businessman bought Eddie’s and gave it a new name and a new look. Beristain is now in Mexico, desperate to return.
Few customers in this mostly white, conservative suburb outside South Bend had known that Beristain, 44, was an undocumented Mexican immigrant. He had paid taxes, started a family and employed 20 people. His family says his only crime was living in the country illegally.
“I felt bad for the people in the situation, but the law is the law, no matter how inconvenient,” said Mike Probst, 61, who owns a business selling boxes. “The world was focused on little Granger for a little bit, but the mood in the community is that we had to move on. Everyone has to move on.”
In July, Beristain’s wife, Helen, and their three young children also moved on, leaving Granger to join him in Mexico. “If we are not together, what kind of family is that?” she said in a phone interview. In the municipality of Zamora de Hidalgo, the couple started a small pancake house to offset the lawyer fees. Their children take classes online because their parents fear they’d be bullied as Americans attending school in Mexico.
At the Shed, talk of the Beristains has been narrowed to quiet corners, where employees were unwilling to share their full names, fearing more threatening calls and comments like the ones that came in a year ago.
One of two women on staff named Jackie recalled how Beristain was such a clean cook that he could stand over the grill in his white uniform and not get stained.
Another wondered why so many Latinos were getting deported. “With Trump in office,” she said, “sometimes it just feels like if you’re white, you’re right.”
Cindy bragged about taking a picture with Anderson Cooper, who came to visit for an episode of “60 Minutes.” She hoped that the president, the courts, someone, would grant leniency for Beristain. Zach insisted that there had to be more to the case. “If you do right, then you wouldn’t have a problem,” he said.
The other Jackie was offended by the idea that Beristain’s record was anything but as clean as his kitchen.
“Everyone,” she said, “is forgetting who he is.”
Beristain had owned the restaurant only a few months. He bought it in January 2017 from his wife’s sister and her husband, who wanted to retire after decades running and selling restaurants in the Midwest.
They had hired Roberto at another restaurant in 2000. He was an industrious dishwasher who worked his way up to head cook, and into Helen’s heart.
“We loved Roberto from the moment we met him,” said his sister-in-law, Effie Limberopoulos, who is 58. “Always smiling, he was always smiling.”
The immigration trouble started in 2000, when the couple made a wrong turn on the way to Niagara Falls and ended up at a border crossing, according to their attorney, Adam Ansari. Agents discovered that Roberto had no passport, green card or ID, and a judge ordered him to return to Mexico by the end of the year.
But Roberto never left. Helen was expecting their first child, and doctors deemed hers a “high-risk pregnancy.” He didn’t want to leave his wife alone. Then, Maria was born, and they couldn’t imagine raising her in Mexico. Then they bought the family business. They wanted to stay in Indiana.
“I didn’t even see Roberto as Mexican,” said Angela Banfi, a friend and waitress at the restaurant. “He was not one of those Mexicans. He was like a white boy to me.”
For customers, Eddie’s became the go-to place for an easy breakfast or a good meal. Granger was growing. Subdivisions were popping up farther south. The Olive Gardens and TGI Fridays of the world were encroaching on the area, but Eddie’s stayed the same. Same old wood panels, same flooring, same waitresses who knew your order and your name and the same chef who would invite you to his wedding.
“It was a steak place, but you felt like it was more of a home,” said Chuck Matheny, 61, a systems engineer who ate at Eddie’s three times a week.
Conversations were usually light and frivolous, he said, until 2016, when customers became captivated by Donald Trump. Matheny and Helen, both Republicans, reaffirmed each other’s support for the GOP nominee. Helen’s husband was less sanguine: Trump, he said, would kick out all of the Mexicans.
“Only the bad ones,” Matheny recalled insisting.
“We need to do something to help end prejudice,” Matheny says now. “If there are so many illegal people in the country, then it gives licence to believe every immigrant is illegal.”
Matheny knew Roberto was trying to get his green card through his marriage to Helen, a Greek immigrant who moved to the country illegally in the 1970s and has since become a citizen.
What he didn’t know was that Roberto had retained an immigration lawyer in Miami and travelled there to check in with him and Immigration and Customs Enforcement each year. During the Obama administration, his attorney said, authorities deferred action and authorized a driver’s licence and a work permit for him.
Less than a month into the new administration, the Beristains drove to Miami, and agents suggested he go to his regional office in Indianapolis instead. The traveled back to Indiana to visit the ICE office. Roberto went inside; Helen waited in the car.
After 45 minutes, an officer told Helen her husband was not leaving the premises.
Banfi was at Eddie’s when she received the text.
“Detained?” Banfi recalled. “I had the worst anxiety in the frickin’ world. I loved Roberto. He was my family. This couldn’t be right.” Banfi was so distraught she called Matheny.
“It changed my view on how the country treats its immigrants,” he said. “I thought they would go after, like Trump said, those who were bringing in drugs and the rapists. But they went after a regular guy who just cared about living the American Dream.” — WP-Bloomberg
The immigration trouble started in 2000, when the couple made a wrong turn on the way to Niagara Falls and ended up at a border crossing, according to their attorney, Adam Ansari.