Minneapolis Businesses Are Struggling to Survive in Trump’s Crackdown—but They’re Banding Together to Fight

Dan Swenson-Klatt owned the Butter Bakery Cafe, a community staple in Minneapolis, for 20 years. In September, with retirement on his mind, he decided it was time to sell the coffee shop to a new owner. But after the Trump Administration launched its immigration crackdown in the Minnesota city in early December, Klatt’s business began to suffer, and the prospect of selling disappeared. Instead, not long afterward, he was forced to close the cafe for good.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The Administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” campaign has brought an influx of federal immigration officers to the Twin Cities and aggressively ramped up enforcement in the area. As the agents spread through Minneapolis, Klatt stopped seeing his loyal Latino and Somali customers, who accounted for a large portion of his business. Sales dropped. Employees of color stopped coming into work for fear of being targeted by federal officers if they left their homes. A mile away, four cooks at one Latin American restaurant were taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in December, according to Klatt. 

On New Year’s Eve, Klatt was forced to permanently close his business. He’s spoken to a lawyer to weigh the option of filing for bankruptcy. And he isn’t alone. 

Amid the ongoing federal immigration operation, around 80% of Minneapolis businesses have reported canceled, postponed, or reduced bookings and sales and 72% have reported staffing absenteeism, according to a January survey by Meet Minneapolis that the organization shared with TIME. Respondents cited the federal activity as the root of these hits to their businesses: 90% said they had been impacted by federal agents’ presence and 90% that fear and stress had affected their operations.

Read more: How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Changed Minneapolis

“I am in the same place as quite a few others who just actually closed their doors up in December,” Klatt tells TIME. 

He says some businesses are waiting for ICE’s presence to “blow over” before reopening, but “I don’t have the kind of resources to just sit and wait it out. And that’s what I hear from the others, is like, we don’t have the savings. We don’t have the resources to maintain this.”

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson dismissed concerns about the economic impact of the Administration’s immigration crackdown in a statement to TIME.

“Let’s be clear, if there was any correlation between rampant illegal immigration and a good economy, Biden would have had a booming economy,” the spokesperson wrote. “DHS has surged law enforcement and has already made more than 3,500 arrests of murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and gang members and is conducting an investigation into rampant fraud of at least $9 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars and immigration fraud. Removing these criminals from the streets makes communities safer for business owners and customers. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

But with the federal immigration enforcement operation in the area nearing its third month in Minneapolis, and in the wake of the fatal shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents just under three weeks apart last month, business owners tell TIME that life in the city has become increasingly interior and the local economy has suffered as a result. 

The federal presence in Minneapolis is set to drop somewhat as the Administration confronts backlash in the wake of the two fatal shootings: White House border czar Tom Homan, who has taken over the enforcement operations in the area, announced earlier this week that 700 immigration agents would be leaving Minneapolis. But around 2,000 others are set to remain there, at least for the time being.

“I’m sitting with nothing in my shop right now,” Klatt says. “And there’s no income because we’re closed. There’s still expenses finishing up from closing up.”

He has redirected his energy and time to help others who are struggling to stay afloat, hoping for change. 

“I don’t know how long I can wait, and I don’t know how long I plan on hanging around here,” he says.

Lagging foot traffic and decreased sales

Symptoms of an ailing local economy are being felt to varying degrees at businesses across Minneapolis.  

The most immediate impact: a decrease in sales. 

Kirstin Wiegmann, the owner of Dreamstate Cafe, tells TIME that the coffee shop has had a “significant” drop in business rivalling the levels of the COVID-19 pandemic, when countless businesses around the country shut down. 

To adjust for a decrease in foot traffic during the federal crackdown, Wiegmann has had to reduce her cafe’s operational hours, no longer providing breakfast service between 8:00 and 11:00 a.m. As a result, she’s made seasonal staffing reductions. Her employees are often working half the hours they used to now; she has advised many of them to apply for unemployment. 

“I would say this is like COVID-level reductions. It’s big. It’s dramatic. And we’ve never had to lay people off any other time, except for COVID when literally everybody had to stop working,” she says.

In a lawsuit seeking to halt the federal operation, the state of Minnesota and the Twin Cities stated in January that customer-facing businesses in Minneapolis had reported revenue drops of 50% to 80%. The Minneapolis Community Planning and Economic Development department has estimated that businesses in the city are losing revenue amounting to roughly $10 million to $20 million a week.

“I don’t think a lot of restaurants and small businesses are going to survive this,” Wiegmann says. “And I’m scared for that.”

Staffing shortages

Other local businesses’ staff have stopped coming in to work altogether—including many who are U.S. citizens of color—to reduce the risk of encountering federal agents, business owners tell TIME. 

“It’s just fear of traveling for the most part,” says Elizabeth Foster, the owner of Inkwell Booksellers. She says some of her employees have not felt comfortable commuting to work through neighborhoods heavily patrolled by federal agents. “It used to be that you would see people walking on the street all the time. Neighbors had their curtains open, and now you don’t see that … It’s really only people walking their dog, and all of the windows or the shades are drawn, so it’s visibly closing off people from each other, and it’s visibly closing off our community from itself.”

The responsibility of filling in for employees when they do not show up for work has fallen on Foster, who is feeling the strain as a result.

Zach Espinoza, the managing partner at Milly’s Wine Bar and Bistro, also oversees employees of color who have been afraid to come into work, despite being U.S. citizens. 

“They’re understandably afraid just if they don’t have documentation or whatever on them, or even in some cases if they do,” he tells TIME. 

“I think the emotional toll has been the biggest for all of our staff,” adds his business partner, Brandon Witzel. 

Compared to other Minneapolis neighborhoods, Espinoza and Witzel’s is not heavily patrolled by ICE. But they have had multiple private and corporate bookings cancelled in just the past few weeks, which has hurt business. 

“There’s a pretty heavy tension in the air everyone in the area is kind of feeling, and it’s kind of top of mind for all of us on a day to day basis,” says Espinoza. 

Struggling businesses band together 

Despite the hit to their sales and staff, business owners are pooling their resources to help each other and the broader Minneapolis population being affected by the federal operation.

Several shops have morphed into quasi-relief sites, providing aid to city residents and people protesting the crackdown in addition to their regular trade. 

Espinoza and Witzel of Milly’s Wine Bar and Bistro have been operating as a dual food donation pick-up and drop-off site; Foster of Inkwell Booksellers has a dedicated space in her store for protestors to pick up whistles and first aid kits; Wiegmann of Dreamstate Cafe has hosted community events and, on the day Pretti was killed, turned her coffee shop into a free soup kitchen.

Jane Shannon, the owner of Bench Pressed, a letter press print store she opened with her husband in 2021, has almost entirely changed her daily business operations to focus on raising money for those being impacted by the immigration operation. 

Read more: Inside Mayor Jacob Frey’s Fight For Minneapolis

“We have really pivoted where we’re focusing our time and where we’re focusing our money to raise funds for other folks in Minneapolis,” she tells TIME, noting that she’s turned down business and put her regular print orders on the backburner.  

Her store has printed and distributed over 4,000 posters to collect mutual aid since federal agents arrived in the city, she says. She also designed a t-shirt featuring the familiar imagery of Minneapolis snow emergency plow signs with the words “F-CK ICE” displayed on top, the proceeds of which will go to the the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and the Advocates for Human Rights. The sales are on track to reach $18,000.

“I think more have pivoted than have stayed regular,” Shannon says about local businesses in Minneapolis.

She describes a food shelf operating out of a Latino-owned barber shop down the road that she is working with and a coffee shop called Pow Wow Grounds that has been hosting medic trainings and serving as a warming space. 

“I mean, it’s like coffee shops, barber shops, restaurants, sex shops. I mean, absolutely everyone has changed what they normally do so that they can help support our neighbors,” Shannon tells TIME. “When everyone does these small things, it does feel like we we have a chance to fight back.”