The Trump administration’s deportation campaign is hurting at least one Cambridge business and its workers. Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents devastated a Central Square restaurant’s kitchen staff six weeks ago.
The business owner, who asked that he and the restaurant not be named “to protect my staff,” said he lost four chefs within a week to Ice detentions, three of the workers at one Central Square location and the fourth at another restaurant he owns in a nearby community.
The arrests forced the restaurant to shrink its extensive menu to only burgers, wings and french fries, plus drinks, for more than a month. Immigration agents arrested three employees at an MBTA station after questioning a number of passengers and the fourth after agents entered an apartment looking for one person and “everyone ran out,” the restaurant owner said.
One detained chef had worked at the Central Square restaurant for 22 years and another for 16 years. The other two had been at their jobs for two or three years, the owner said. The arrested chefs have no hope of blocking their deportation, he said.
The restaurant owner’s story places two workers as being held at the same Louisiana detention center where Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil were taken after Ice arrested them this year. Ozturk, from Turkey, and Syria-born Khalil, had separately criticized Israeli military action in Gaza. They were held for months before lawyers won their release on bail, though they still face criminal charges and continued government efforts to deport them, including an attempt to revoke Khalil’s green card allowing him to live and work in the U.S. legally.
The restaurant owner said conditions at the detention center are “terrible,” with no air conditioning and 48 people held in a cell. One of his workers held there was arrested three days before he had planned to fly to Spain to be with his wife and their two children, the owner said.
Because of that, the worker signed paperwork to speed up deportation to his home country, Colombia, after he was taken by Ice. “He wanted to get deported as soon as he could so he could go to Spain,” the owner said. The restaurant sent the man’s passport to him to help. Despite the paperwork, the man remains in Louisiana, where he and the other detainees are suffering from the conditions, the restaurant owner said. “It’s very sad and it’s very evil,” he said.
The Ice arrests of his workers “are generally known” among Central Square businesses, he said. A manager at another Central Square restaurant spoke of the arrests. She said she told employees at her restaurant “to make sure you have all your papers at all times.”
A stronger
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This immigration approach is horrible! It’s awful that working people who have spent their adult lives here are just disappeared, with little to no chance of appeal.
Jailing them in Louisiana makes it even harder for them to communicate with people who could help them, like lawyers, family, and friends- another inhumane policy. The terrible conditions are also inhumane- why is this tolerated or legal?
I hope the restaurant owner has tried to connect his employees to lawyers.
“She said she told employees at her restaurant ‘to make sure you have all your papers at all times.'”
This is an abrogation of responsibility to protect her workers and preemptively blaming the workers for anything that happens to them. Business/ property owners do have rights they should be aware of and exercise when it comes to ICE: https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/EmployerGuide-NELP-NILC-2017-07.pdf
Community, we must take care of one another by watching out and reporting any sightings of ICE to the the LUCE hotline (617) 370-5023 so we can track and deter their activities.
We can end this thuggery if we stand together to support our neighbors and blow the cover of ICE wherever they appear.
20 years snd never sought to legalize their status! 🤦♂️
And now stuck in limbo 🤷♂️
Often a remedy is unpleasant. The problem was king Biden opening the borders without voter or anyone’s request. He didn’t campaign on that, but Trump did on fixing Biden’s self-inflicted and unnecessary disaster that has cost Mass. and others Billions of dollars to house, feed, clothe, educate, and give health care to migrants that Biden and Democrats wrongly invited in with offers of free services and money.
If Biden had not opened the flood gates, illegal immigration would have remained at more manageable levels for both CBP and our schools, food kitchens, hospitals, and shelters to support Instead, King Biden worsened the problems tenfold resulting in voters seeking aggressive fixes
We need ICE detention centers in Mass. so detainees are not sent out of state. Like prisons, it is a huge hardship on family and lawyers when a person is sent out of state.
Slaw, your point is well taken if the arrests happen at the establishment. But these arrests happened in an MBTA station and at an apartment.
Your admonition of the restaurant owner is understandable given that the headline is misleading on this point, making it appear that the enforcement actions happened at the restaurant. Given that they didn’t, her advice to her employees is sound and reflects a sense of responsibility to them.
Markk- how magnanimous of you to slander Biden, then say we need more detention centers in Mass so people don’t have to be sent out of state.
What about due process? the ability to have a hearing to see whether indeed these people ARE criminals, etc. At least Biden was working on legal immigration using visas and court systems. Obama deported more illegals than trump did prior. people are being locked away with no recourse. This draconian process is not Biden’s doing but King Trump and his minions.
There is no need to build detention centers in Massachusetts.
We are fine, thank you.
I am the child of a Greek who jumped board in Montreal at age 17 & made his way to NYC, where he toiled for 17 years as an undocumented alien: following the passage of the Quota Act of 1924 –severely limiting immigration of ‘undesirables.’ This same xenophobia is being exploited 100 years later by an administration hellbent on deporting 3000 migrants/day — whoever they may be. To deport to a Louisiana hellhole 2 cooks having worked 22 & 16 years respectively in a Cambridge eatery is reprehensible: i.e., they are NOT utilizing services provided by US taxpayers. Rather, they are paying into an SSI system they will never access — as well as doing vital work.
How little things have changed since my dad arrived here 100 years ago. Ironically, he ended his working life feeding Puerto Rican garment workers in NYC (where he became fluent in Spanish).
What groups are working in Cambridge to help vulnerable immigrants like these who emphatically belong here? L. Moussouris
I am the child of a Greek who jumped board in Montreal at age 17 & made his way to NYC, where he toiled for 17 years as an undocumented alien: following the passage of the Quota Act of 1924 –severely limiting immigration of ‘undesirables.’ This same xenophobia is being exploited 100 years later by an administration hellbent on deporting 3000 migrants/day — whoever they may be. To deport to a Louisiana hellhole 2 cooks having worked 22 & 16 years respectively in a Cambridge eatery is reprehensible: i.e., they are NOT utilizing services provided by US taxpayers. Rather, they are paying into an SSI system they will never access — as well as doing vital work.
How little things have changed since my dad arrived here 100 years ago. Ironically, he ended his working life feeding Puerto Rican garment workers in NYC (where he became fluent in Spanish).
What groups are working in Cambridge to help vulnerable immigrants like these who emphatically belong here? L. Moussouris
Stand Out against these Cambridge ICE arrests in Central Square.
Tuesday July 22, 2025, 3:30-5pm.
In front of Cambridge City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave.
Bring signs. No speeches. We will stand out and hand out informational flyers (to be provided).
Sponsored by Indivisible Progressive Mass Cambridge. progressivemasscambridge@gmail.com