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Brandon Mejia usually spends his weekends conducting a symphony of vendors serving pupusas, huaraches and an array of tacos at his two weekly 909Tacolandia pop-up events.
Half food festival, half swap meet, the events draw 100-plus vendors a week in Pomona and San Bernardino. They offer a way to “legalize” street food — vendors get a reliable location, cities collect taxes and enforce health codes — while patrons enjoy delicacies from all over Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Spanglish music plays, people dance and kids flock to facepainting and pony rides.
But in the past week, that’s all come to a screeching halt. As the Trump administration ramps up immigration raids in California, some restaurants, worried about their workers or finding that customers are staying home more, are closing temporarily. Many street vendors are going into hiding, and some food festivals and farmers markets have been canceled.
Mejia called off all Tacolandia events last week. His mind raced about whether agents would come for his vendors as videos surfaced on social media of taqueros, farm workers and fruit vendors vanishing in immigration raids around LA and neighboring Ventura County.
“A lot of these vendors, their goal is to have restaurants. They want to follow the rules,” said Mejia, who was born and raised in San Bernardino in a family from Mexico City. But after conferring with vendors, they decided the risk was too high: “Some people have told me that their relatives have got taken, so I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
After a week of mass protests and more raids at farms, grocery stores and at least one swap meet, Mejia and many others remain on edge. Mejia said some small food businesses are getting desperate, trying to decide whether to risk reopening or stay closed while their own families grow hungry.
The disruptions come at a difficult time for California’s restaurant industry, which is already grappling with soaring costs for ingredients, labor, rent and regulatory requirements. In Los Angeles alone, more than 100 well-known restaurants closed last year, the Los Angeles TImes found — all before the immigration raids that industry leaders warn could further hamstring the industry.
In California, the food and restaurant industry employed about 1.42 million people as of April — a sizable workforce that is being affected regardless of the immigration status of its workers. That includes nearly 600,000 people who work for full-service restaurants.
Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Association, called immigrants “the lifeblood of our industry.”
Confusion over Trump orders
President Donald Trump and his administration have sowed confusion: Late last week, the president posted the following on social media: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.” That led to reports that his administration would pause most raids on restaurants, farms and hotels.
This week, those exceptions were reversed.
“The President has been incredibly clear,” said Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, in an emailed statement to CalMatters. “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts.” McLaughlin said “worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts.”
When CalMatters asked whether worksite raids would target only those with criminal records, the agency did not respond.
“I’m following it step-by-step,” Mejia said of the administration’s announcements. “I fall under those categories — hospitality and restaurants. But the thing that scares me is he said he’s going to go to the biggest cities — LA, Chicago, New York. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
A food-truck owner in the Pasadena area who has had to shut down said she has a hard time trusting what the president says.
“We feel like (Trump is) not being honest,” said Adriana Gomez Salazar, who was 4 years old when she came to the U.S. from Mexico and has been able to work legally for years without fear of deportation as a DACA recipient. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, established under President Barack Obama, is facing legal challenges.
Salazar had to shut down her Altadena-based food truck, LA Cajun Seafood Boil, after the January fires. When she reopened, she said customers were scarce because the area needs to rebuild. She was not eligible for a Small Business Administration low-interest disaster loan because she’s a DACA recipient, something she said is frustrating because she is a taxpayer just trying to make a living.
Now, Salazar has had to shut down again to try to protect herself and her workers — and because many customers are staying home out of fear of the ICE raids. She is trying to bring in income from catering jobs and has started a GoFundMe to try to raise money not just for her but for an employee who is out of work now.
“I have no idea how long I’m gonna be shut down for,” she said. “Trump can say a lot of things (about pausing ICE raids) but he has also said he wants to do the biggest mass deportations in history.”
In the LA neighborhood of Wilmington, a farmers market also has closed down. “Due to increased ICE activity in Wilmington, many of our farmers are scared and have chosen not to attend… We do hope to one day reopen… but for now, we must step away,” according to a Monday post on the Wilmington Farmers Market’s Instagram page.
Similar stories and concerns have emerged up and down the state. San Diego restaurant Buona Forchetta was the site of a “traumatic raid,” the restaurant’s owners recently confirmed in a statement. They had to close for a couple of days.
In the Bay Area, restaurant owners and industry groups are anxious and bracing for possible impact on their workers and businesses.
Owners educate workers about their rights
An owner of a Mexican restaurant in the historically Latino Mission District in San Francisco, who requested anonymity over fears his restaurant and workers could be targeted by ICE, said he has gone over possible scenarios with his employees in case federal agents enter the restaurant.
He has a sign that clearly says “employees only” beyond a certain point. Beyond the sign, it’s not a public space so his employees are supposed to be safe there, he said.
His employees also know the agents need to show a warrant, and that they should check the name on the warrant. They also know to try to stop the agents verbally as well as to use hand gestures, so his security system’s cameras can pick it all up for possible evidence later.
His employees all had the necessary paperwork when they were hired, but he can’t be sure of their immigration status.
“I don’t want to assume anyone’s undocumented,” he said. “I have no reason to question them.”
He said all he can tell them is to be careful out there, especially now. “I told them I’m careful because I look very Mexican,” he said. “So know your rights when you’re out on the street.”
According to an estimate by the Migration Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank, more than 250,000 undocumented immigrants in California worked in the accommodation and food services, arts, entertainment and recreation industries in 2019.
Condie said the California Restaurant Association is working with the National Restaurant Association to push for federal immigration reform, which includes providing pathways to legalization for those who are undocumented and creating a temporary worker visa program.
The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which has about 800 industry members mostly in San Francisco, is focusing on disseminating information to try to quell some of the anxiety.
“This fear is really causing stress on families, workers, and also on customers,” said Laurie Thomas, the association’s executive director.
Besides the possible personal and financial toll on workers and owners as a direct result of the raids, she said protests against the raids could mean double trouble for restaurants, which have very tight margins: They have to prepare for the possibilities of a lull in business, violence and vandalism, too.
Thomas is tracking the changing directives coming from the Trump administration. “Until there is clarity regarding ongoing actions, there will continue to be a high degree of stress in our community,” she said.
Some California restaurant owners are remaining defiant — and open. In Long Beach, El Barrio Cantina chef and owner Ulises Pineda-Alfaro decided that his restaurant would offer the community a place to gather and take a break from doom-scrolling.
After a few calls to popular Mexican-owned liquor brands, he also came up with a way to give back to those on the frontline. For $13 last weekend, customers could get the restaurant’s taquitos de papa and either a margarita or a whiskey sour, with 100% of proceeds going to local immigrant rights group Órale.
“The hospitality industry, the backbone of it, is mainly made by immigrants,” Pineda- Alfaro said. “My dad was an immigrant until he got his citizenship. It hits close to home.”
By last Friday, an Instagram post announcing the deal had more than 50,000 views, and Pineda-Alfaro said about a dozen people were waiting outside when the restaurant opened for lunch that day — a welcome sight as other pockets of the city sat empty.
“I have seen some vendors and some other restaurants closing early or not opening at all,” he said. “We’re embedded in the community, hence our name. We’re going to remain open.”
This article was originally published by CalMatters.
