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Tiffany Hansen: It's the Brian Lehrer Show. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Tiffany Hansen filling in for Brian today. Since taking office, President Donald Trump has made his campaign promise of deporting undocumented immigrants a priority. According to the Washington Post, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's field offices have been told to make 75 arrests per day. Those numbers do not seem to have been met so far. Numbers from Tuesday show that ICE agents made over 20 arrests in parts of Manhattan and the Bronx. That's according to Yahoo News.

As we've been reporting here at WNYC, it has been taking a toll on New York City's schools and hospitals. There is another industry that is vital to the city that is also impacted, restaurants. Nearly 60% of the restaurant industry's workforce is foreign-born. That's according to a new Grub Street article. Joining us now with his reporting on the fears among local restaurant workers over potential ICE raids is Chris Crowley, a senior writer at Grub Street. Hi, Chris.

Chris Crowley: Hey, how are you doing?

Tiffany Hansen: Great. Thank you. Of course, we'd like to have you, listeners, join our conversation. Are you undocumented and working in the restaurant industry? We do know that this is a sensitive topic. We will be sensitive to you, but we would love to have you call. What does this moment feel like? Is it safe to those of you who are undocumented? Maybe you just want to tell us stories about how your careers in the restaurant industry began and how they're going now. As for restaurant owners, managers, workers, what would deportations of restaurant workers mean to you, your livelihood, your restaurant? Call us 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can also text us at that number.

Chris, you wrote that, "The fact that the industry relies on undocumented labor is not so much an open secret as an indisputable truth." Let's talk about how much undocumented labor props up the restaurant industry. Do we have numbers? Do we just have anecdotal evidence?

Chris Crowley: I think anyone who-- I worked in restaurants, anyone who's worked in restaurants for a longer period of time than just dipping into it will have worked at a place where there are people here who are of uncertain status or undocumented. Some of the reporting I've seen recently is that there's 42,000, about, restaurant workers who are believed to be undocumented working in New York City. Those figures, of course, you're going to get uncertain figures to some degree or other. Because you're asking to get certain numbers about people who are living often in the shadows.

Any restaurant you go to, and particularly kitchens, because there are various reasons why that might be the case. Unless you're working in an immigrant neighborhood, if you're in a restaurant where the clientele is primarily speaking English, there might be language barriers. A lot of times people, of course, work in jobs where they're not as customer-facing.

Tiffany Hansen: When we say restaurant industry workers, are we talking mostly about folks working in kitchens?

Chris Crowley: Yes, there's more people working in kitchens than there are people working in the "front-of-house" jobs. If you're talking about someone who is working in a restaurant in a neighborhood where it's predominantly Spanish-speaking or Bangladeshi or whatever else, then that might not be the case. Somebody in the front might be-- language barrier is not going to be an issue there.

Tiffany Hansen: You mentioned 42,000 here in New York City. I wonder if you have a sense how that number may have changed over time. A decade ago, was it less, was it more?

Chris Crowley: I don't have specific figures in that sense, but--

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, just anecdotally your sense.

Chris Crowley: I was working in restaurants 12 years ago before I started working at writing. It was the case like all the places I worked, that there were people, and it was the case that there were-- that was just understood that anywhere you work, people were going to be in that situation. I don't think that's changed.

Tiffany Hansen: You have spoken in your reporting to a chef who is an immigrant and a restaurant owner who has said that some of his employees have been staying home as a precaution. We've heard other stories about that in terms of people who are running food carts, food trucks, those sorts of things, taking those carts off the road and just staying home. I'm wondering, is that essentially what you've been seeing from undocumented workers, just based on the specter of these raids, that they're just going to bow out for a while?

Chris Crowley: The impression I get is it depends on the neighborhood that people are in. I think that the thing is that you hear more-- I've heard more of that, and I've seen in the reporting, it seems to indicate that that's going to be more the case in neighborhoods that you're seeing ICE agents show up in. You have restaurants or street vendors or whatever else. It's in a neighborhood that has a larger population of people that might be the ones that they're targeting. People are more concerned in those areas than they might be in areas where they're not as worried about ICE showing up.

The Upper East Side might be less of an area for them to target. Of course, you also hear from people that they're worried about taking the subway or so on. People in different neighborhoods will tell you that their employees have talked to them about rumors and reports of agents being on the street. Those are unverified, but it's the concern.

Tiffany Hansen: We have a text. "I'm 54 years old. When I was about 17, 18 years old in 1987, I worked in catering. Most of the guys that worked in the back in the kitchen were undocumented. For years, they exploited undocumented labor instead of focusing on young people or college kids or neighborhood kids that might do the work. Why should the public be concerned with the industry that exploits people?" In your conversations with these workers, is it the sense that they feel exploited? Do restaurant owners that you talk to, I guess just your own sense here, Chris, are they seeming exploitative to you?

Chris Crowley: I don't want to say this about anyone that I spoke to. I think in any other industry there are good actors and bad actors. I think it's an indisputable fact also that you have undocumented workers that are exploited in these places. The owners of La Morada, Natalia-- Sorry, La Morada is a restaurant in the South Bronx that is open about being owned by and operated by people who are undocumented.

Natalia, as I understand, as she talked to me about it, is that she worked in places where there were ICE raids. She was taken advantage of by employers who knew that she didn't have recourse because of her status and so she started street vending and selling food, and it gave her some agency in her life. I don't think that that's-- that is also not a question to me. It's complicated. I don't want to valorize exploitation or low wages of anyone. The idea that there are college students that are clamoring to get into these jobs is not true.

Tiffany Hansen: I do want to get to that. Let's bring a caller into our conversation here. Chris Robert in Staten Island. Hi, Robert.

Chris Robert: Hi. I'm definitely not a Trump supporter, and I understand all these immigration issues pretty thoroughly. I've had conversations with people on both sides of the fence on how this all works. One of the things that I've brought to light is that the employers are a big part of the problem because they create the demand for the work of undocumented people where they exploit them. They're not paying the minimum wages, and then on top of that, they're paying cash under the table, off the books, whatever. They're not paying their taxes. They're not supporting their local economy with repairs and schools and hospitals and all the stuff that tax money brings.

They're also exploiting them because they're not paying them the minimum wages. They're taking advantage of them. We have laws in place already that are supposed to be enforced against business owners for not hiring people that are legally allowed to work in the country. Nobody enforces these laws. They're all talking about walls and deportations and ICE raids when a simple measure is just enforcing existing labor laws against these businesses. If you get rid of the demand for undocumented labor, then people would not be coming into this country in droves because they would not be able to work.

Tiffany Hansen: Robert, thank you so much for the call. Chris, I don't think we can make generalizations to your point about any exploitation that may or may not be happening and whether or not people are paying minimum wage or not paying minimum wage. I wonder if you've heard from restaurant workers that when they hear people talking like this or talking about potential ICE raids, what that does for the anxiety level?

Chris Crowley: I would say to-- can I just address something that was--

Tiffany Hansen: You can, absolutely.

Chris Crowley: I think that consumers create demand for this, too. All these people want to talk-- I don't disagree with what Robert was saying, it's just parts of it, but people want-- they want cheap products, they want cheap groceries, they want cheap meals at restaurants. They don't want to pay more money for them. We have dealt with a ton of inflation. Elections have gotten much more expensive while wages haven't necessarily increased for everyone in a parallel way. People want everything to be cheap, and then they want to talk about how the employers are exploiting them.

It's, as a consumer, are you willing to pay more money for something or are you not? I don't think everyone is willing to pay. I think there's a lot-- Again, this is more than I can say right now, but it's not exactly a fringe opinion that Americans value the cost of things above everything else. To answer your question-- Sorry, the cheap cost above quality. To answer your question about-- I think what it is is just-- the word that I think of is just fear. It creates a-- or the environment right now is that people don't-- there's a lot of anxiety. People in these positions don't know if they're going to be targeted or not.

The thing I think about is it's like the fear of getting hit by a stray bullet, gun violence on the street. It's probably not going to happen, but if it happens, it's not good.

Tiffany Hansen: We're talking with Chris Crowley here, who is a senior writer at Grub Street, about the fears among local restaurant workers over potential ICE raids. Listeners, we would love you in this conversation. Questions, comments for Chris, you can call us at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Chris, let's take a call here from Danny in Brooklyn. Good morning, Danny. Oh, and we lost Danny. Actually, we could take a different call here. How about Lamor in Queens? Good morning.

Lamor: Good morning. How are you?

Tiffany Hansen: I'm great, thank you.

Lamor: I've worked in industry for over 30 years, and it's known that you need undocumented immigrants to work in that industry. The restaurants that have the intricately cut vegetables and meticulously prepared cuisine where there's a lot of cutting and cleaning and turning and carrying of the food, you need a certain amount of immigrants to do that at a minimum wage or below minimum wage. It's always been that way since I've been in industry. Unless, of course, before 30 years ago, where it was a very powerful union staff that worked in the big hotels from back in the day.

For the most part, it's this symbiotic relationship. You can't function without undocumented immigrants from everything from the person who cleans the grease trap in restaurants, the person who's taking care of your vegetables. What American are you going to get to clean up the grease trap? No, not too many are signing up for that job. It frustrates me when I hear that undocumented immigrants are being targeted in restaurants because those people are the backbone of industry.

Tiffany Hansen: Lamor, thank you so much for the call. Chris, I'm wondering-- First of all, anything to add to that?

Chris Crowley: Not too much. I understand the sentiment. To me, it feels like it's this limbo where these people are put into, and if you want to talk about changing the way the industry works or something, okay. I don't think this is happening because they're concerned about the quality of these jobs. Sorry. I don't think because the Trump administration is concerned with the quality of these jobs or what people are being paid or that they're taking jobs away from Americans.

Tiffany Hansen: Let's talk about the specter. Let's get back to the specter of these ICE raids. Excuse me. One of the first events, one of the first raids that we were made aware of, at least here in the region, is the one in New Jersey. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. Where ICE agents went into a restaurant. I'm just curious, one, if you're hearing folks-- Once that information gets out there, how does that ratchet up the anxiety among undocumented workers? Then, two, how is good information being shared among restaurant workers?

Chris Crowley: One of the people I talked to was saying something about, like, "Oh, we heard about raids happening near us." One of the people I quoted in the story was talking about getting a call, frantic calls from a friend who said that they were sweeping a neighborhood. That guy ran restaurants. Then another person that I was with was just telling me about getting texts the other day about another restaurant getting raided. I think what it is, is that it's just-- I imagine that it drives home the feeling that it's real and that it could happen in your neighborhood, and you just have to wait and see.

Again, it hasn't even been a month. The shoe is just dropping. In terms of information, obviously, a lot of information gets shared on social media. I would recommend that people go and talk to someone at the New York Immigrant Coalition, for example, organizations that can give you real solid information and advice on how to deal with this.

Tiffany Hansen: What crowdsourcing is happening?

Chris Crowley: What crowdsourcing? Beyond the person who told me that they have a basement that they've told other people that they can use if ICE is in the neighborhood, I think people are just creating emergency contact lists, trying to get in touch with nonprofits, and so on, and creating dockets of information that they can share with each other if they need. Sometimes it's just within the group. If somebody comes to you and asks, "Hey, do you know how to do XYZ?" Then they're, obviously, going to share that, communicate that information.

Tiffany Hansen: Communicating knowledge about the whole process at this point, I can imagine, would be paramount. You spoke with a chef who told you that most undocumented workers don't even know their rights. We have in place a system that says you can't raid a private establishment without a warrant. On both sides of that, what's your sense about both what workers know and what restaurant owners know about what's legal?

Chris Crowley: I imagine it's complicated and it depends. You have people that are running-- One of the people I spoke to, it just occurred to me as-- I guess it often is what-- You talk to people about certain things like this, and it's you have these people and they're running a mom-and-pop business, and they're probably working 70 hours a week, if not more. They don't have five people in management. They don't necessarily have the time to spend figuring all this stuff out, and so you have people that maybe are in neighborhoods where they need to know these things, but aren't necessarily in a position to do so.

I was talking to Diego, the chef that you mentioned before, and one of the things that he had said is that it's important for people to know that under US Law, they have the right to due process. Again, there's more to that. Technically, anyone who comes into the country, as he said to me, is presumed to have committed a crime, but by word of law, they haven't been convicted. You're totally right that ICE doesn't have the right to raid without a warrant. They can't go into private areas or areas that are marked as such without a warrant. Sorry.

Tiffany Hansen: No, I'm just curious. I wanted to circle back. You talked a little bit at the beginning of the conversation about what the impact might be on restaurants and restaurantgoers if large numbers of deportations of undocumented workers does happen here over the course of the next four years. What would it mean for the city's restaurant industry?

Chris Crowley: It depends on how large scale it is. If you're just removing a significant portion of the workforce, that's not going to be replaced. These aren't always super desirable jobs. If the people are gone, the people are gone. People aren't necessarily, again, clamoring to be a dishwasher. I'm not, again, saying that this is-- I think people deserve a reasonable living and so on. I don't want to valorize people being paid low wages, but it is a fact that this workforce will just go away. I don't know who's going to replace it. Are there going to be enough people to operate all these restaurants? Yes, the restaurant industry is tethered to this workforce. [crosstalk]

Tiffany Hansen: It's a massive part of New York City's economic engine. That's undeniable. We have predictions coming from city officials saying that 2025 is going to be huge in terms of tourism numbers. I can imagine that there are conversations happening about what the impact of that might be, right?

Chris Crowley: Yes. I would say that I haven't necessarily-- I think everyone's still stuck in the moment of this all hitting them. At least the people I've talked to, they're just thinking about right now.

Tiffany Hansen: Let's talk with Brenda here in Princeton, New Jersey. Good morning, Brenda.

Brenda: Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to call in, show some gratitude to all the restaurant workers that work in the back of the kitchen. I myself worked in a restaurant when I was younger and they work really hard. I know that people like Robert think that all the laws should just be enforced, but some of these people have been doing this for so long and they have families and they're high skilled, some of them. I think they would appreciate an opportunity for the country to provide a path to legalization, but they don't have one. They have to do what they have to do to survive. I think we should appreciate their work a lot more than we do.

Tiffany Hansen: Thank you, Brenda. Appreciate that call. Chris, I always think gratitude is a great place to end a conversation, for sure. I'm wondering if you think that, have heard that just having these conversations is opening up more awareness around what undocumented workers do in our restaurants, do for our city, et cetera.

Chris Crowley: Yes, I think that you always say it's an undisputable fact that the restaurant issue depends on it. Not everyone, if you don't work in the industry or so on, you might not be fully aware of exactly what's going on or what people's lives are like. I think it's very easy to just talk about legality and these black-and-white terms when you aren't interacting with people or in these positions. I think it's much more complicated than that. It's important to realize that these are people that work difficult jobs and have come of-- I don't know, not all of us have it in us to go to these lengths just to try to make things better for kids.

Tiffany Hansen: Chris Crowley is a senior writer at Grub Street. We've been talking about local restaurant workers and the potential of ICE raids here in New York City. Chris, thanks so much for your time this morning.

Chris Crowley: Thanks for having me.

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