A couple days ago the Raleigh N&O whined about local Raleigh area eateries having issues. Now we have the NY Times
Worse Than the Pandemic’: Restaurants Say ICE Presence Imperils Business
In several cities where immigrants are being detained, owners say they’re struggling to stay open as fear keeps customers and workers from leaving home.
Even as the Covid pandemic shut down every dining room across the country in April 2020, Americans were still ordering takeout, and millions of restaurant employees were getting paychecks funded by government assistance.
Now, as that same government is rounding up immigrants it believes to be in the country illegally — about 70,000 are currently in detention — Cecelia Lizotte, the owner of two Nigerian restaurants called Suya Joint, in Boston and Providence, R.I., says many of her customers are afraid to come in. She can’t even get people in her neighborhood to pick up free meals.
Several of her employees are nervous about coming to work, though Ms. Lizotte says they are in the country lawfully. Her brother, Paul Dama, a Nigerian immigrant who is the restaurant’s manager and was in the process of applying for asylum, was detained on the way to church by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June and held for three months at a detention center in New Hampshire.
See, that link the Times offers fails to mention relevant information
Asked about the case, ICE spokesman James Covington said in a statement, “Paul Naanman Dama is an illegally present, 46-year-old Nigerian alien who has been unlawfully residing in the United States since August 2019, when he violated the terms of his lawful admission. Dama has two prior convictions for operating a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor. ICE Boston arrested Dama in Brockton, Massachusetts June 15 and placed him into removal proceedings.”
We do have laws. If he had gone through the normal system of becoming a US citizen those convictions would have disqualified him.
In interviews over the past few weeks, restaurant owners in several cities where ICE agents are out on the streets echoed that sentiment: Their businesses are not only teetering on insolvency, they said, but feel even more vulnerable than during the pandemic.
You know, forget the rest of the pro-illegal alien article, let’s cut to the chase: if your business model relies upon hiring illegal aliens and serving illegal aliens, well, any problems are ones you created. They’re lucky the feds aren’t charging the owners with violating federal law in hiring the illegals. It is a federal crime.
Heaven forfend! What if Sophie’s has to close? Where will the Timesters dine?
Obvious question: has the Times checked its own workforce, to make sure none of their employees is illegal?
Maybe restaurants shouldn’t hire illegals. Problem solved.
Knowingly hiring the undocumented is a crime*, but a crime that is rarely enforced for some reason.
Being “present without authorization” is a civil offense, punishable by deportation. It’s estimated that as many as 50% of the undocumented entered legally at ports of entry (visa, work permit, Border Crossing Card, work visa) and overstay.
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* illegal under U.S. federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1324a), resulting in severe civil fines ($698–$27,894 per worker), potential criminal prosecution, imprisonment, and debarment from federal contracts.
Mr Dowd is quite correct: the employers should be prosecuted. Throw a few of them in jail, and the rest will get rid of their illegal employees fast. Once the illegals have no jobs, they’ll self-deport!
Under 8 USC §1324 (f)(1) the maximum penalty is six months in jail, certainly enough to put the fear of God in employers if they don’t straighten up and fly right, and enough to put small businesses under if the owner gets locked up. Larger corporations would survive, but the bosses wouldn’t want to be sacrificial lambs in jail.
ICE Barbie Noem says the Mad King is ridding America of invading cannibals!!! She said one cannibal even started eating himself on the plane!!!
The other night Representative Lauren “Handjob” Boebert (R-CO) claimed Dems were consuming babies!!
Is this their latest strategy?
https://theintercept.com/2026/02/23/kristi-noem-ice-cannibal/
It was also reported that a young girl bit Don Raper’s Little Smoky while force to service him.
Cannibals!!!!
They do not come to be citizens of the USA or participate in our society. They come here to get free stuff from our corrupt Democrats and take whatever they can from our citizens. They are never going to integrate into our culture; they come to force their culture of dog eat dog on us. We are simply willing fools and easy marks. Deport them all… Our compassion for those living in poverty from countries that are ruled by corruption and theft will be our downfall. We are simply importing the problems of others. They have no respect for our culture, our people, our beliefs, or our laws. Our values and our morals are inconceivable concepts to these people.