ICE Has Restaurant Workers Terrified

There is one conversation happening in restaurants right now, but no one wants to talk about it. Since taking office on January 20, President Donald Trump has issued a rash of executive orders on immigration and followed through on his campaign promises to ramp up deportations of undocumented immigrants. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s field offices have been told to make 75 arrests per day and that “managers would be held accountable for missing those targets,” according to the Washington Post. Stories of Immigration and Customs raids have already come out of cities like Bakersfield, California; Chicago; Philadelphia; and the Washington, D.C., area. News of one raid, at a seafood market in Newark, made national headlines. Here in New York, agents have conducted raids across the boroughs and publicized the arrest of Venezuelan immigrants.

Immigrant families say they’re keeping kids home from school. Street vendors are afraid to work, less they get ticketed and wind up with a criminal record that could be cause for deportation. And while Trump has said that his administration will focus on undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says that all undocumented immigrants “are criminals as far as this administration goes.”

Within New York’s restaurant kitchens, an air of fear has settled over everything. In the city’s restaurants, nearly 60 percent of the workforce is foreign-born, but that hardly tells the real story. The fact that the industry relies on undocumented labor is not so much an “open secret” as an indisputable truth. “I had a conversation with my chef, he’s Ecuadorean and he’s been working with us for 30 years, and he was like, ‘I guess I’ll just hide when they come,’” says one Jackson Heights restaurateur. “People in the neighborhood are talking about it. Agents are coming around, and people are scared to go to work.”

One immigrant chef and restaurant owner says some of his employees stayed home as a precaution. “Everyone is okay,” he told me. “But the fear is there.” Others said their workers had come into work and shared stories of ICE walking up to people on the streets in their neighborhoods. One person connected to the industry heard a story about a raid at a popular Manhattan restaurant.

When I texted one business owner to ask about this, he wrote back, “Let’s talk in person. I began replying, then realized what the country is coming to.” Another chef said, simply, “Please don’t quote us.”

Nobody is quite sure which stories are fact and which are fiction, but the anxiety they’re creating is real. “Two days ago. I’m mid-service. It is a full restaurant. My phone is ringing a lot,” says Joe (not his real name), a restaurateur who learned that it was his friend, another restaurant owner, who’d been trying to reach him. “He says, ‘Yo, they are sweeping my neighborhood.’ I’m in service, it’s madness, this is swirling in my head. You’re hearing it from here, you’re hearing it from there. Whether the individual stories are true or not, the industry is talking about it.”

Everyone notes that something has shifted and that this push feels fundamentally different than before. “I don’t remember talking about them actually coming into restaurants like we’re talking about it now,” says one chef. The GM at his restaurant agrees: “It just feels so sweeping this time.” At their restaurant, they’ve been having conversations with staff about how to handle a raid, even if they consider it unlikely. “Our No. 1 thing, if ICE walks in,” the manager says, “is to just start filming.” They’ve taken additional steps, like creating an emergency contact list. “It feels like the same mentality that we have with the Department of Health,” the GM adds. “You might as well be incredibly overprepared.”

Those precautions might include areas where workers can shelter if necessary. “I talked to some people at some of the neighboring restaurants about how we have a space, so if ICE is coming around, they have the access code to get into our basement,” says a chef at one downtown restaurant. “And then, in English and in Spanish, we’ve printed actions that you should take when ICE comes to your door. We’ve gone over them at lineup, and the vibe is just like disgusted terror.”

At least two crowdsourced maps of ICE sightings — People over Papers and Juntos Seguros — have been started, and if you’re in the restaurant industry, or follow people who are, you’ve likely seen digital flyers with the titles “Know Your Rights” and “How to Protect Your Employees.” Chef Diego Moya, who grew up undocumented, says the more important step is for managers to educate themselves and hold team meetings or drills. In his experience, most undocumented immigrants don’t know their rights. “You really need to explain this stuff to them. They don’t have any experience. They haven’t read the laws,” he says. “They probably think it’s black and white. Quite possibly, they can avoid a lot of heartache if they’re taught to behave in a certain way or not respond.”

There is an added fear that “unsavory employers” — in the words of one operator — will use the threat of deportation to further exploit vulnerable workers, but the owners and managers I spoke with seemed most interested in making sure their employees, and thus their businesses, were prepared. “We’ve sent out as much information as we’ve been able to get so far, in terms of what we think is the best course of action,” a chef-owner says. They have provided everything they’re able to, he adds, short of a lawyer. Currently, he’s looking into nonprofits that provide legal support. “We’re gonna do everything we can, but there’s only so much we can do in the end. We’re fighting an enormous machine.”