Frank Ray, a former cop turned country singer who released a song called “Hard to Be a Hero” for “Police Week” in May, is now speaking up against what he sees as the overzealous policing of immigrants.
In an Instagram post on Monday, he wrote that on Thanksgiving, Ray’s brother-in-law, identified by Newsweek as Juan Antonio Nevarez-Porras, who is Mexican and had just renewed his employment authorization, was detained by TSA in El Paso, Texas. Ray’s nephew, who is 16 and an American, had to wait for his dad while border patrol agents detained the man. “My brother-in-law was subsequently taken away to a facility under the custody of ICE,” Ray wrote. “No warning. Just gone.”
Ray continued the story by detailing how his sister, waiting for her husband in Nashville, was unaware of what was happening. When she got the call telling her where her husband was, Ray started questioning his beliefs in law enforcement. He wrote that he still supports law enforcement officers (“‘Hard to Be a Hero’ came from a real place,” he wrote) but sees problems with the overall architecture of ICE. “There’s a difference between heroes … and systems that forget people are human,” he wrote.
The singer, who scored minor hits in recent years with “Country’d Look Good on You” and “Somebody Else’s Whiskey,” went on to reflect on himself. “I’m also a proud Mexican American,” he wrote. “I know what it looks like to work hard, to build something from nothing, to love this country, and still feel like you’re treated as ‘other’: And when agencies start using predatory tactics to target hardworking families — when kids get caught in the middle, when holidays turn into trauma — that’s not safety. That’s not protection. That’s a failure of a broken immigration system.”
Ray wrote that he’s come to reconcile his beliefs with what happened to his family member by putting it all in terms of right and wrong. “This is happening to people from my culture all around the country,” he wrote. “And I just know that we can do better. I can be a patriot and think this is wrong. Both can be true. You can love this country and still say, ‘This isn’t right.’”
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He closed his missive by dismissing any notion that he has since subscribed to a new political ideology. “Family comes first,” he wrote. The final slide is a portrait of his family.
Newsweek reports that Nevarez-Porras’ wife (and Ray’s sister), Alyssa Nevarez, says her husband, who works as a foreman for Renegade Construction, had a five-year work visa, which he’d obtained in March. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, however, told Newsweek that it believed Nevarez-Porras had faced charges of battery, assault, criminal trespassing, and disorderly conduct and additionally claimed he’d entered the U.S. illegally in 2006.
“He did have a criminal trespassing charge in 2023 for being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Nevarez told Newsweek. “I’m feeling lost, confused, sad, so many emotions and feelings with everything. Juan’s feeling hopeless and desperate, of course, sad, and scared.” She married Nevarez-Porras 18 years ago; the couple has four children.
In a follow-up post on Tuesday, Ray mentioned that his sister was now crowdfunding for help for her family and that country music is what has given him the resolve to speak up. “If there’s one thing that country music has taught me,” he said in the video, “it’s that you gotta stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. … In my brother-in-law’s case, he exemplifies everything we sing about in country music: family, faith, and hard work.”
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And he addressed the government’s role in what happened to his family. “If our government and we are willing to let them do that, if we’re willing to treat them like Americans and tax their income and let them start businesses and LLCs and all that stuff and treat them like American citizens, they should be afforded rights, right?” he said. “And how convenient that we can treat them like American citizens until we don’t have to anymore.” He also acknowledged openly that he was speaking up only because he felt an injustice was served to his family. “When those injustices come knocking on my front door, of course I’m going to say something,” he said.
The ICE website says Nevarez-Porras is “in ICE custody” at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico. His family told Newsweek that a hearing on his status could be scheduled next month.
