Last year’s Dominican Day Parade Breakfast hosted by U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat. Image Credit: Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photography Office.
By Mark Chiusano
On the same day last month that heavily armed federal agents gathered for a widely-publicized immigration raid in the Bronx, the New York City Hospitality Alliance sent out an email with the subject line “What To Do if ICE Knocks on Your Door.”
For President Donald Trump’s new administration, the day was full of bombast, with new Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem riding along and talking about getting “dirtbags” off the streets.
For the Hospitality Alliance, a decade-plus-old nonprofit representing the city’s restaurants and nightlife spots, it was a reminder that raids and a climate of fear for immigrants could – and likely will – have an effect on city small businesses and the local economy.
“This is clearly something that our industry is very focused on,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the Alliance. “We are a labor-intensive industry and immigrants have been and are the backbone of our sector in so many ways.”
The email included information for employers about what they should do if they find themselves the target of a raid from ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — not an idle threat given probes in Trump’s first term and the number of vulnerable workers in the sector. A recent report from the Fiscal Policy Institute and Immigration Research Initiative estimates that there are 7,000 chefs, 17,000 cooks, 9,100 food prep workers, and 9,200 waiters who are undocumented in New York State, about 12 percent of the labor force in those four occupations in total.
Losing some or many of those workers could have a significant impact on New York’s restaurants. The city just recently suffered a labor shortage as businesses emerged from the pandemic, Rigie noted. That deficit was “crippling,” he said, translating into reduced days and hours for hospitality businesses, fewer menu items, and too much work for the people who were left.
The shape of Trump’s actual “mass deportation” agenda remains unclear, with some experts and advocates wondering if the new administration will largely target undocumented residents with criminal records, or if much wider sweeps are on the way. But between Trump’s campaign promises and publicity around the early raids, fear is already setting in among many immigrants and members of “mixed status” families, even in New York City. Local sanctuary laws that limit how much city agencies can cooperate with ICE do not generally apply to private establishments like restaurants or bars. And Mayor Eric Adams has been eager to support ICE efforts, even before Department of Justice officials directed local federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against him, claiming that the pending prosecution had “restricted” the mayor’s ability to focus on immigration issues.
If many immigrants are in fact deported or otherwise driven from New York City and state, the direct economic impacts could be stark. The FPI/IRI report cites cost of living increases due to the loss of labor, as well as the potential of up to $3.1 billion in foregone state and local taxes paid by some 670,000 undocumented people in New York. Even if one out of ten of those people were “deported or put into detention camps,” the report suggests, “that would result in a loss of $310 million in state and local tax revenue,” roughly the cost of extending free school meals to all children in New York public schools.
Mass deportations and raids would also lead to less obvious economic impacts, argues David Dyssegaard Kallick, one of the report’s authors. Employers may still look to hire immigrants without authorization. “But they do it, for example, through subcontracting and sub-subcontracting, which is also costly,” Kallick said, categorizing it as hiring somebody else to take the risk: “You’re adding inefficiency to the economy and increasing prices.”
And for those who get swept away who are business owners themselves, there could be an impact on their employees, the landlord for their business, the bank that they borrow money from, and more. “The ripple effects go pretty extensively through the economy,” said Kallick.
Other robust NYC industries, like care and construction, also employ thousands of undocumented workers, the report estimates, compounding the economic effects.
Trump allies have argued that immigrants are taking jobs from American workers, a major element of their pro-enforcement argument. But the report contends that mass deportations would actually result in fewer jobs for other workers for a host of reasons, including that fewer cooks means fewer waiters, and fewer care workers means less work flexibility for parents.
Immigrants in New York and beyond are already reacting to the new political reality, disrupting routines to the point that street food vendors are keeping their carts in garages and some recently arrived students appear to be staying home from school due to fear of ICE. That’s bad for business too.
“When there are raids, it sends shock waves and fears through the community, so people can just stop showing up to work,” said Rigie, from the Hospitality Alliance. And small enterprises don’t tend to like raids from the feds.
“No one wants ICE running into their business,” Rigie said.
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Mark Chiusano is a Senior Fellow in New York Law School’s Center for New York City and State Law and the author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.