This Father’s Day, We Stand with Immigrants—and Honor Their Legacies

June 11, 2025

The recent immigration raids in Los Angeles are heartbreaking and infuriating. Let’s be clear: this city runs on the strength, labor, and spirit of immigrants. They care for our children, harvest our food, prepare our meals, and build our communities. Without them, LA doesn’t work. Neither does much of the country.

I know this firsthand. As a kid, I tagged along with my mom when she cleaned houses and with my dad as he worked as a gardener. My parents were proud to have honest work—proud to show my sister and me that dignity can be found in even the most unglamorous jobs. That pride stayed with me.

Today, when I teach my kids how to rake and water the lawn, I’m reminded of the children we often see running around our producer partners’ palenques in Mexico. If you’ve ever visited one, you know that no mezcalero works alone. Mezcal is made through community—families, friends, and neighbors sharing work, wisdom, and meals. It is a generational ritual. 

This Father’s Day, we honor one such legacy: Raúl García Santana, who works side-by-side with his father, Francisco García León, to produce small-batch mezcal in San Guillermo Miahuatlán.

Francisco, originally from Agua del Sol—the namesake of their mezcal—built his own palenque when Raúl was a child. Raúl remembers collecting agave leaves and watching the men roast piñas in earth ovens. "My father told me that's how I’d work one day," he says. “I saw how the maguey cut his arms.”

Raúl’s story, like so many mezcaleros’, is also an immigrant story. When he was 10, his father left for the U.S. to support the family. Every couple of years, Francisco would return to Oaxaca and make mezcal, even though it wasn’t yet profitable. “He had a room full of mezcal drums,” Raúl remembers.

At 16, Raúl followed in his father's footsteps and emigrated to the U.S. Three years later, he returned home—drawn back by family, land, and the calling of mezcal. “My dad taught me how to tell when an agave is ready to harvest, how to recognize the signs in fermentation, how to distill,” he says. "I began to learn what my father knew best."

These stories—of leaving, returning, building something with and for your children—echo across LA and across our immigrant communities. They deserve dignity, protection, and a future.

This Father’s Day, we invite you to stand with immigrant families:

• Consider donating to a nonprofit providing legal and housing support to immigrants in crisis. Find a few we support here.
  

• And if you’re shopping for a meaningful gift, we recommend a bottle of Raúl and Francisco’s “Coyote, Agave Lyobaa”—a spirit that carries their family story in every sip. Only 9 bottles left. Order yours here.
  

To the fathers who labor for a better future and the children who carry their dreams forward, we see you. We stand with you.

In solidarity,
Fred Sanchez
Owner, Bad Hombre Importing, LLC