One June 14, Trump ordered ICE to stop raiding hotels and restaurants. Because of the dependence of many hospitality ventures on unauthorized workers, ICE raids pose an existential threat.
Out of 8 million unauthorized workers in the United States, one million work in hotels, restaurants and bars. They are primarily in non-customer facing jobs, i.e. back of the house. Among restaurant servers, only about 8% are unauthorized, and among bar tenders only about 1%. But a quarter of maids and housecleaners (about 400,000) are unauthorized, as are 15% of kitchen workers. I expect that in major coastal cities the share of back of the house restaurant workers who are unauthorized is very high. A third of chefs in New York City are estimated to be unauthorized workers.
Prior to the order, there appear to be very few visible large-scale raids on restaurants and non on hospitals.
One occurred in San Diego on May 30, when ICE raided Buona Forchetta. According to the San Diego Tribune, between 20 and 25 ICE agents conducted the raid; the agents handcuffed all employees present on site and later detained a handful. Crowds gathered. San Diego mayor Todd Gloria released a statement, “Federal actions like these are billed as a public safety measure, but it had the complete opposite effect. What we saw undermines trust and creates fear in our community.”
These figures are from 2020 Census data.