Miguel Lopez’s routine is very different than it was a month ago, before the ongoing federal immigration crackdown created the biggest disruption to Twin Cities restaurants since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Always an early riser, he now adds another two hours to his mornings to be able to do the day’s shopping for his St. Paul restaurant Homi. He then delivers supplies to former employees who are no longer willing to risk leaving home, and then helps his depleted team with ingredient prep in the kitchen before opening to customers.
Lopez spends the day in the kitchen, where he takes phone orders and makes food shoulder-to-shoulder with his three remaining employees, down from seven before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began its “Operation Metro Surge” in early December. The employees are all Latin Americans who have taken to wearing their immigration paperwork around their necks on lanyards.
Related: ‘If I can do it, I’m going to’: How Twin Citians are helping immigrant neighbors
“They don’t know if an agent is going to give them time to reach for their wallet or go to their locker before they haul them away and lock them up for days or weeks until they figure out [they are here legally],” Lopez said.
“Pretty soon they’ll just have us tattoo our immigration information on our foreheads in big block letters. Or do they want tattoos on our arms, like the Nazis?” he said. “That should make things nice and easy for everyone.”
Immigrant-run restaurant owners and employees interviewed this week said they feel villainized as criminals or fraudsters, despite doing valuable and underappreciated jobs. Several were afraid that speaking on the record would jeopardize their business or make them a target of ICE.
Related: Amid fears of ICE raids, Minneapolis businesses say some customers are scared and staying home
With the dining room closed and the restaurant door always locked from the inside, some might see Lopez’s as less welcoming than it once was. Like many immigrant-run business, Homi has switched to online and phone orders and allowing small parties to knock to enter as a way to keep employees and customers safe from increasingly aggressive ICE tactics.
With no in-restaurant seating and some immigrant customers, regardless of their legal status, just too afraid to come pick up orders, Lopez’s revenues this month are down 50% from the same time last year, he said.
“We’re multitasking, we’re running around, we’re doing what we have to do to make it to the other side of this,” Lopez said of himself and the skeleton crew left with him. “We used to think [the boosted ICE presence] would be over quickly once they got the real criminals. Now, I don’t let myself think about when it will end, if it will even end… It feels like this is the new normal.”
Lopez said he only knows how to do two things: make food, and take care of his workers and community. He doesn’t know how to stop doing either, he said, holding back tears.
“My employees have families, and those families rely on my business for them to survive,” he said. “So, we have to keep going.”
Restaurants have contended with employee shortages because some workers — documented and undocumented — are afraid of being swept up in ICE raids, which have sometimes targeted entire establishments’ staff.
Those hunkering down at home are left with minimal income. Some owners like Lopez provide some money even to those not working, while others simply cannot afford the additional expense.
The fear extends even to some citizens who worry their ethnicity will open them up to questions about their legal status.
“My siblings, even though they’re citizens, are afraid to leave their homes because they don’t want to be harassed,” said Savio Nguyen, co-owner of Càphin Minneapolis, a Vietnamese cafe.
Related: ‘My eyes were stinging’: The chemicals used by ICE when they confront protesters
Savio and his wife and co-owner Jenny Nguyen are the children of Vietnamese immigrants. They recently finished preparations for a second location in downtown Minneapolis.
Instead of firing up the espresso machines, the second location is currently serving as the donation and volunteer headquarters for an emergency donation drive.
The idea came out of conversations between Savio and Jenny and various foodie influencers on Instagram, as well as some buy-in from former Love Is Blind Minneapolis contestant Madison Errichiello.
Like other donation drives happening in the Twin Cities they are aiming to collect essentials like toilet paper and food, as well as board games and other diversions for kids.
“We just wanted to bring some joy to people who can’t leave their homes,” Savio said.
Community efforts have sprung up to try to protect and support immigrant-run businesses, with patrons helping to patrol for ICE agents in the area, as well as encouraging people to spend their money.
Wes Burdine, owner of the Black Hart queer soccer bar in St. Paul, also has settled into a new routine over the past month. After school dropoff, he meets up with an ICE patrol group. Burdine spends the next two hours monitoring ICE activity on the east side of the city and trying to document and alert neighbors to immigration actions with his car horn, a whistle, and his cell phone.
“These are the ‘normie’ moms and dads and college students, taking time out of their days to make sure their neighbors feel safe and are safe, and so if anything does happen we have witnesses,” Burdine said.
Burdine knows that January is a bad month for the service industry generally, and that many immigrant-run restaurants had seen their staffing and sales drop because of the ICE presence.
So in an effort to do something good for other business owners and fight the feeling that the world was falling apart, he’s encouraged people on Bluesky to patronize immigrant-owned restaurants for lunch and share photos of their meals.
“If all it does is break the doom-scrolling habit once a week and reminds people to go out and actually support these businesses that are hurting,” he said, “then that’s a step in the right direction.”
The post The people who run some of your favorite Twin Cities restaurants are scared and exhausted — but determined to survive the ICE crackdown appeared first on MinnPost.
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