At Midtown Global Market, businesses are closed or barely hanging on
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Brother and sister owners Manny and Victoria González stand in their Manny's Tortas stall at Midtown Global Market. Photo: Nick Halter/Axios
Manny González's torta stand in the Midtown Global Market survived the burning and looting of Lake Street in 2020, but might not make it through the flood of ICE agents in the immigrant-heavy neighborhood.
- "This is worse," González said.
Why it matters: ICE's unprecedented surge into diverse Twin Cities neighborhoods has battered small businesses that had been inching back toward normal after 2020.
- The Lake Street Council told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal that on a given day, up to 60% of businesses along Lake Street are closed. Several were dark at the Global Market as well.
- It goes beyond Lake Street, as the Star Tribune reported similar distress on other corridors, including St. Paul's Payne Avenue.
State of play: Business is down 40% at González's popular Manny's Tortas, and he thinks he can only survive another month like this.
The latest: As he talked to Axios from the Manny's Tortas kitchen on Wednesday, the sound of whistles could be heard just outside the market's doors as ICE agents walked by.
- "They just abducted another person," a market staff person said, noting that agents have been a constant presence outside the complex filled with Latino and East African businesses.
Between the lines: Proprietors say their employees are afraid to show up for work, which would be a bigger problem if not for the fact that their customers are also staying home.
The other side: The Department of Homeland Security has said local businesses should be thanking ICE for arresting "rapists, child pedophiles, gang members, and burglars."
- About 5% of the first 2,000 people arrested in Minnesota in the ICE surge have violent convictions, according to a Fox 9 analysis.
Zoom in: At the Midtown Global Market, business owners told Axios that staff from Allina Health in the complex have provided some lunchtime business, but nights and weekends have been hollowed out since ICE's December arrival.
Nuur Ugas measures the ICE downturn in goats and lambs. He usually orders 15 or 16 a week to sell at his Oasis market and halal butcher shop, but since the agents showed up in Minneapolis, it's down to three or four a week.
- Most of his customers are East African, and even though they have legal status here, many don't speak English and are afraid of a confrontation with ICE.
- "If this continues, in two months I am going to be out of business," Ugas said.