COLONIAL BEACH, Va. -- A festival to celebrate Hispanic heritage in Virginia's Colonial Beach has been canceled because of the fears of some immigrants.

For the past several years, Colonial Beach has celebrated Cinco de Mayo, News4's Derrick Ward reported. As the Hispanic population has diversified, planners wanted to make it a celebration of Hispanic heritage in general this year, but that won't be happening.

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Festivities were to include a parade and then the festival on the town commons. But a call from the Fairfax office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services changed that.

"The lady that I spoke to, she said she wanted to have the physical address of the Hispanic-American festival," said organizer Maria Roe. "I asked, 'Why does Immigration want to know the physical address of a festival in Colonial Beach?'"

Roe, who writes a Spanish-language column for a local weekly newspaper, said the caller didn't give an answer.

"I don't want to be responsible for one single parent to be taken from their home, whether they're illegal or not," said Roe, who launched the festival three years ago.

Gloria Williams-Brevard, an Immigration Services community relations officer, said the call was simply intended to find out more about the festival and its location. She had an interest in attending the festival to offer information on how her office can help immigrants with visa applications, citizenship requests and other support.

"We're not the enforcement component" of immigration, she said. "If nothing else, it sounds like there is an opportunity for outreach there."

Roe said she communicated her concerns to the Colonial Beach Foundation, which was organizing the event.

Until four years ago, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was grouped with the enforcement arm of the INS, but now it is a separate entity helping people become citizens. The phone call and the recent deportation of a woman whose wife and children still live in the area frightened potential festival-goers, Ward reported.

"They were afraid," Roe said. "They did not want to have any part of it."

Seasonal workers from Mexico and Central America are becoming an increasingly important part of the economy in this tourist community on the Potomac River and in the rest of the Northern Neck. About 950 migrant workers are employed by the region's farms, nurseries, lumber mills and seafood processing houses, according to the Virginia Employment Commission.

"I think that our immigration laws need to be adjusted in some way to recognize the seasonal workers," said organizer Dr. Peter Fahrney.

Roe's fears of an immigration crackdown "rattled a lot of people in the area," Fahrney said.

"There was anxiety in the Hispanic community that they were going to be hassled or singled out in some way" at the festival, he said.

Colonial Beach Mayor George Bone Jr. said it's a problem of concern if the Hispanic community can't feel comfortable in Colonial Beach.