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Sebastian Francisco Perez arrived in the U.S. on May 5, hoping to save money so his wife at home in Ixcan, Guatemala, could begin fertility treatment.
“He came with many hopes to this country, without knowing that he wouldn’t return,” a pastor said at the beginning of a vigil for Perez, a 38-year-old nursery worker who collapsed in a field at Ernst Nursery and Farms during last weekend’s record-breaking heatwave.
Reyna Lopez, executive director of PCUN, the farmworker union that coordinated the vigil on the edge of a hazelnut grove just outside Ernst Nursery and Farms in St. Paul, described Perez as “one of ours – he was a farmworker, Indigenous,” who arrived in the U.S. to fulfill his family’s dreams.