Laura Barron-Lopez:
I talked to Bo Blair. He is the owner of Millie’s, which is a restaurant in a Northwest D.C. neighborhood. And he told me that ICE agents showed up on Tuesday. Some were in uniform. Some were in plain clothes. And agents asked to speak to employees. And they were denied access to those private areas of the restaurant.
And they asked, again, for those I-9 documents, but those are not housed at the restaurant. They’re housed at headquarters. Bo Blair told me that two of his employees are already too scared to return to work, they did not return to work today, and he’s concerned that they may not come back for the rest of the week.
Bo Blair told me that he’s worried about the overall chilling effect that this could have on his workers, some who have worked there for 20 to 25 years. He called it — quote — “a whole new level of harassment” of his law-abiding employees and said that without immigrants there are no restaurants, that they are key to that industry.
Now, we also spoke to George Escobar. He works with the immigration advocacy group CASA, and he said that they are giving a lot of different advice to both businesses, as well as individuals, on how to handle these ICE visits.
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