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A small business owner near Minneapolis said employees and customers are concerned about ICE activity in the area.
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He worries about the safety of his employees, who sometimes miss work to avoid immigration officials.
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Activists across the country are encouraging another economic blackout to protest ICE’s activities.
The now-famous article was based on a conversation with Michael Knox, a co-owner of Toma Mojo Grill near Minneapolis. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I own a fast-casual chicken restaurant in Ridgefield, Minnesota (a suburb south of Minneapolis).
Since ICE agents are in the area, I don’t know when or if staff will be able to report to work. We both have pretty set schedules and we’re very close. There are only six of us running the place, seven days a week. I worry: Will my employees get stopped on the way to work? Will they be harassed or detained? Will they come back?
It’s a day-to-day thing. Over the past few weeks, we have adjusted our hours, opening later and closing earlier. I’ve been picking up everyone’s shifts, but I can’t work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. We had to close last week so I could have a day off. I have a doctor’s appointment that I can’t miss.
Some of my employees are reluctant to leave their homes. If they tell me they can’t come to the restaurant, my policy is of course “no questions asked.” I get it. But I’m not a wealthy businessman. If we don’t serve food to our guests, no money comes in and we can’t pay people. I wish we could offer better PTO benefits, but we don’t. It’s hard.
We just want to make sure our people are safe and our employees are comfortable. We have a large bay window in the front of our dining room that looks into the full kitchen. I’m going to make some modifications to this space to make it more difficult to see inside. We don’t know who is looking now or what their purpose is. We installed cameras that we didn’t have before – we need to record everything that happens here.
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No matter why ICE agents are at the restaurant, it’s not good for business
I’m worried that ICE agents will come to my company and kidnap my employees. I was also worried about the hospitality they were being treated with and that hospitality becoming known to the public. I can only do what I think is good for me, my staff and the restaurant. ICE agents are bad for business no matter where they come from.
Last week, my sales were down about 40% year over year. There are fewer delivery drivers and gig workers, so our takeout food needs to sit longer before pickup. Our door-to-door business is also affected: after the sun goes down, our sales drop almost significantly. This has not happened before. Now I have regulars I haven’t seen in weeks.
I went on strike last week with friends and family to express our dissatisfaction with the status quo. My staff and I felt it was important to be closed that day as well. Closing a restaurant on a Friday in January is devastating. It’s a busy day, one that brings in revenue for the rest of the week. It’s a big sacrifice – but I know it’s important.
What happened in Minneapolis should shock every American. There is a very real and widespread fear of what will happen next. This is bad for business. This is bad for life. I fear more lives will be lost.
Small business owners are brave people. It takes a lot of courage to put everything in to do something you really want to do and present a product or service that you think is good enough to charge for. They tend not to be the quiet type. I’m not surprised by what they said.
Read the original article on Business Insider