Latino businesses collapse under deportation terror: ‘What is happening now is worse than what we experienced during Covid’

Customers decrease by up to 60% and employees abandon their posts out of fear of ICE agents showing up

Mar 30, 2025 - 01:00
Latino businesses collapse under deportation terror: ‘What is happening now is worse than what we experienced during Covid’
Daysi García, owner of a small business in Mount Rainer, Maryland on March 21, 2025.

In January, just days after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, immigration agents came to Dana Beauty Salon in Mount Rainer, Maryland, located just two minutes from the Washington D.C. border. They were looking for one of the employees, an undocumented migrant, who was taken into custody and is being held at a detention center in New Hampshire pending a court hearing. That day changed the life of the salon’s owner, Daysi García. “They showed up one day, I think it was a Thursday. By the time the weekend came around, no one was coming in, our workers weren’t coming in for their shifts, not even the clients were coming in,” she recalls sadly.

Seguir leyendoOwner Daysi García at work in Dana Beauty Salon.A worker at Dana Beauty Salon.