HOUSTON, United States (AFP) — Oscar Garcia Santaella’s Mexican restaurant is hurting badly as US immigration agents stage raids in Texas: his customers are afraid to leave home and some of his staff are wary of coming to work.
Garcia, who is 54 and originally from Mexico, runs a variety of eateries and one is a normally bustling Houston-area taco joint called Los Primos.
Its troubles are a microcosm of what is happening in restaurants elsewhere in Texas and around the country as President Donald Trump’s administration presses on with his dogged campaign to arrest and expel people without residency papers.
Most of Garcia’s clientele is Latino, the ethnic group often targeted when Immigration and Customs agents pounce at restaurants, construction sites, parks and other places where Spanish-speakers tend to gather or work.
Texas — a conservative state where Trump enjoys broad support and 40 percent of the population is Latino — has had its share of these ICE operations, many of them captured on video and shared on social media.
Among other sites, ICE staged raids at an apartment complex near Garcia’s restaurant a month ago.
“They were there a week. And both that week and the next, we sold nothing. It was bad, because people were afraid to go out,” Garcia said.
One of his employees who lives in that complex called to say she could not report to work because agents had arrested her cousin.
“It has affected restaurants in general in the United States, as I have friends in many cities who have restaurants and I speak with them. In our case our sales are down 40 percent.”
According to the Texas Restaurant Association, in the second quarter of this year 23 percent of its members lost employees, 21 percent received fewer job applications and 16 percent lost customers.
As of 2022, approximately 11 million people lived in the US illegally, according to government figures.