‘We stand with our people’: Sana Sana Cerveceria supports Phoenix immigrants

Amid rising immigration enforcement activity across the country and in Arizona, a recently opened brewery is standing out from other downtown Phoenix businesses in openly supporting the immigrant and Latino communities.

In an Instagram post, Sana Sana Cerveceria, owned and operated by Daniel Castro and Johnny De Luna, made a clear statement on where they stand, offering up a bit of their background and how their ancestry — the grandparents who labored on factory floors and cleaned homes, parents who worked graveyard shifts and “skipped meals” — led to the very establishment of Sana Sana.

“They kept going. That’s our truth. These are our roots,” the brewery’s post reads.

The city of Phoenix is home to over 690,000 Latinos. That’s over 42% of the city’s population, making this community the majority, according to recent U.S. Census figures.

In their post, Castro and De Luna clarified that while they owed much of their success to their family, Sana Sana also exists thanks to the support of local Latino businesses like their own, making note of the various artists who contributed to their shop’s aesthetic, including muralists Tato Caraveo, Lalo Cota and Adam Vigil, and designers Javier “Spawk” Cordova with Spawk & Co., Dino Sanchez with Dino's Style Kustom Pinstriping/Airbrushing and Ray Cruz and Frank Padilla with Working Class Cultura.

Other businesses around the Valley have started doing the same, like Spice Scottsdale, owned by Luisa Rodriguez and Anjalee Sadhwani, who designed a special edition “Dios nos bendiga” shirt, offering 100% of proceeds to Puente Human Rights Movement, an immigrant rights organization based in Phoenix. Before Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the organization began preparing and offering resources to the immigrant community an doperating the Migra Watch hotline (480-506-7437), where community members can report sightings of ICE agents.

“Created by the daughters of immigrants… We are proud to stand with our community,” a post on their Instagram page reads, where they offer additional resources available to residents.

These actions come weeks into elevated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in metro Phoenix. Since mid-May, when agents began detaining migrants minutes after their immigration court cases were dismissed, to just days ago, as community members began reporting and showing up as ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers carried out raids in Valley cities, more and more Phoenix residents are speaking up.

“People will try to reduce us to just a brewery. We’re more. We built a space for comunidad,” the Sana Sana post reads.

“Make no mistake about where we stand. We stand with our people. We live this. We breathe this. Sana exists for us and for everyone who values culture and community no matter where they come from.”

The brewery is also donating 3% of its proceeds to Puente Human Rights Movement.