Latino Voices

Business Owners in Little Village, Back of the Yards Say Sales Declining Amid Fears of ICE Raids


Latino neighborhoods in Chicago are on edge amid increased reports of immigration raids by federal law enforcement agents. The reports are sparking fear in communities like Little Village and Back of the Yards.

According to the Chicago Police Department, nearly 100 people have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement; however, it remains unclear how many of those individuals had criminal records.

WTTW News spoke with business owners about the impact they are seeing.

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Veronica Perez, a lifelong resident of Little Village and owner of Jesse’s Flowers, said sales have plummeted since President Donald Trump took office. It’s a drastic drop she hasn’t seen since the pandemic.

“Nobody wants to come out,” Perez said. “They want to be stuck inside, and they don’t want to even send the kids to school, and I don’t think that’s right. … I walk down 26th Street and I don’t see people, especially at night.”

As fears of ICE sightings spread, Jennifer Aguilar, the executive director of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber is doing everything possible to mobilize and protect the community.

“People expected maybe branded ICE trucks,” Aguilar said, “and now we’re seeing that it’s all sorts of federal law enforcement showing up in cars that have tinted windows. … So it’s just new tactics that are being used that we didn’t expect.”

In the last two weeks, the stretch of 26th Street in Little Village — known as the city’s second busiest business corridor — has been described as a ghost town.

“Businesses have been sharing that they have been seeing drops in sales from about 50-60%, especially during the weekdays, but weekends, which are the strongest and most packed days here on 26 Street, have also been affected,” Aguilar said.

Restaurant Los Candiles is among the impacted businesses. Clarita Lopez, one of the owners, said lunchtime is typically the busiest time — but recently, the restaurant has only served a handful of customers.

“It feels like we are in the pandemic or worse,” Lopez said in Spanish. “Trump promised to raise the economy, and what’s happening is bringing it down, and I hope we don’t continue this way because our business could be in jeopardy.”

Lopez said the family business has been operating in the neighborhood for more than 29 years.

“This affects everyone with or without papers,” Lopez said in Spanish. “I think we all depend on each other, and now people are carrying this fear if there’s raids or if people are being taken. People are truly scared to leave their homes.”

In the Back of the Yards neighborhood, the manager of Super Mercados El Güero y México shared the same sentiment.

He said although sales have declined, he noticed customers are coming in to purchase groceries in bulk to minimize the number of trips to the grocery store. Now he worries that fear in the community will lead to chaos rather than unity.

It’s a sentiment shared by others in the area, some of whom have called Chicago home for decades.

“It was first like, ‘Oh, we’ll just come after criminals, help us out and we’ll leave everybody alone,’” Aguilar said, “but to them criminals are just people who may have completely clean records, but just the fact that being here without the documentation is enough to make them a criminal and that’s what worrisome and that’s what puts everybody at risk.”


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