So many food service workers are being deported that restaurants are now begging lawmakers for help [View all]

Source: The Independent

Friday 17 April 2026 17:29 EDT


Restaurants in deep red Texas are making an unlikely call for immigration reform as the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues to rock the industry nationwide. A group of businesses and food-industry groups came together last month to form Seat the Table, which is lobbying for work permits for immigrant food and agriculture workers.

“I think the vast majority of Americans recognize that there is a large group of undocumented immigrants who have been literally keeping food on our tables,” Kelsey Erickson Streufert, chief public affairs officer at the Texas Restaurant Association, a coalition member, told The New York Times. “And if we remove those people, it is going to hurt everyone in terms of higher prices.”

Restaurateurs and labor organizers alike say the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has sent chills across the industry, with businesses losing workers to deportations and even legal employees staying away for fear of being picked up.

“We have created networks of people that are driving, observing, and guarding our spaces in shifts morning and night,” an anonymous restaurant owner told the industry news site SevenFifty Daily about his employees in Minneapolis during this winter’s mass federal immigration operation in the state. “We moved team members from riskier areas and secured rent-free places for them to live in safer neighborhoods.

Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-deportation-immigrants-restaurant-industry-visas-b2960138.html