ICE came to town and left behind weakened economies

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MINNEAPOLIS — Operation Metro Surge has been over for months. The same can't be said for the crisis facing Daniel Hernandez's Colonial Market grocery stores.
After Hernandez's parking lot became a well-known hangout spot for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, the lines that Hernandez grew accustomed to seeing each morning at his stores disappeared. The rebound in traffic Hernandez hoped to see after the end of the surge never materialized.
"We're barely — literally barely — surviving," Hernandez told CNBC in an interview inside one of his stores, where Spanish-language music played through speakers and piñatas dangled from the ceiling. "The damage has been done."
This summer, Hernandez shuttered Colonial Market's location on Lake Street, the heart of Minneapolis' Hispanic business community. Hernandez had spent savings and borrowed money against his house to open the store two years prior. He said sales at his stores have declined by roughly 60%.
The financial turmoil facing Hernandez and others in Minneapolis is being experienced, to varying degrees, in communities across the country. As President Donald Trump has directed federal immigration officers to carry out mass deportations in major U.S. cities during his second term, a growing body of research shows that a monthslong economic chill followed.
Cities where immigration raids took place in 2025 experienced a nearly 3% decline in weekly foot traffic and a more than 6% drawdown in spending, according to an analysis from University of Pennsylvania professor Zeke Hernandez. (No one with the surname Hernandez mentioned in this article is related to one another.)
Collectively, he found that resulted in around 8 billion fewer visits and billions of dollars worth of lost spending in those places that year.
"You are creating recession-like conditions in targeted neighborhoods," Zeke Hernandez said. "It's like a localized recession."
'Disaster' in Minnesota
Operation Metro Surge, which was billed as the largest-ever immigration enforcement action by the Department of Homeland Security, ran from early December to mid-February in Minneapolis. Months after its official conclusion, local businesses were still trying to get back on steady ground while community leaders calculate the economic effects.
The Lake Street Council said immigrant-owned businesses in the commercial district cumulatively lost $46 million in December and January. Council members went door to door in the months after the surge to help small business owners — several of whom do not speak English as their first language, if at all — complete paperwork for emergency relief funds.
At bars and eateries in the ZIP codes containing the Lake Street corridor, year-over-year foot traffic underperformed nearby neighborhoods for months after the surge officially ended, according to data analyzed exclusively for CNBC by Advan Research. That gap peaked in March at nearly 10 percentage points.
Across the board, the Minneapolis government estimated that the City of Lakes lost almost $700 million worth of economic activity between December and April from the surge. Mayor Jacob Frey told CNBC that figure was likely conservative and that the city was left grappling with "tail" effects from the operation.
City lawmakers released about $7 million for local businesses and more than $3 million in rental assistance. Frey acknowledged that would not be enough funding to resolve a situation that many in the community compared with a natural disaster.
"Traditionally, disaster relief is not a partisan issue," Frey, a Democrat, told CNBC. "Traditionally, disasters are not caused by the government themselves."
Employment dropped in U.S. cities experiencing immigration enforcement surges, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution published last month. Six months after a respective surge, the report found that the most-impacted cities had a 0.4% employment shortfall.
The labor force participation rate fell at a faster clip in Minnesota than it has in the U.S. overall in the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The North Star State's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in 2026 eclipsed the national average for the first time in about 19 years.
"Operation Metro Surge can sometimes be perceived as only affecting undocumented workers," said Tyler Schipper, an economist at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota's largest private college. "That wasn't the case at all."
Eviction notices dropped year over year in Minneapolis in January and February, according to Home Line, a Minnesota-based tenant advocacy group. While the surge caused some companies to cut workers' hours, Eric Hauge, Home Line's co-executive director, said a combination of government housing funds and mutual aid programs likely helped cushion their personal finances.
As those funding sources ran dry, Hauge said the relative volume of eviction notifications spiked. Total notices in the year through August rose around 7% compared with the same period in 2025.
To supplement government aid during the surge, the Minneapolis Foundation collected millions of dollars from corporations based in the city. However, R.T. Rybak, the nonprofit's chief executive, said big firms were slower to speak out about the surge than they were following the death of George Floyd — a shift he attributed to a fear of retribution from the Trump administration.
"I understand the extraordinary political pressure that was put on these businesses," said Rybak, a former Democratic mayor of Minneapolis. "But I think it's pretty well understood around here that this was not the greatest moment for our usually very effective corporate philanthropic sector."
The Hispanic American economy
Trump made mass deportations a pillar of his first term and 2024 campaign. Democrats have marketed next month's midterm elections as an opportunity for voters to show their displeasure with his signature policies.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement to CNBC that a "surge in illegal immigration under President Biden threatened the long run fiscal health of the country, contributed to record high inflation, and suppressed the wages of American workers."
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said that "illegal immigration is a labor-supply shock aimed at the bottom" and can drive up rent costs.
Advocates for Hispanic Americans warn immigration crackdowns could stymie a demographic that has become a key driver for national economic growth. If U.S.-based Latinos made up their own country, the Latino Donor Collaborative told CNBC on Wednesday that its gross domestic product would be the fourth largest in the world at $5.1 trillion.
Yet the growth rate for the average Hispanic household's spending in the U.S. decreased by about 2 percentage points over the last two years, according to Numerator. In a 2025 survey from the market research firm, Hispanic consumers were 50% more likely to cite immigration-related policy as a top issue.
"We're being challenged right now," said Sol Trujillo, co-founder of the California-based Latino Donor Collaborative. "These policies can be highly disruptive to our economy."
To be sure, it's not only Hispanic consumers and businesses under pressure.
The Minneapolis-based Children's Theatre Co. had to cancel several shows when its venue became unreachable due to blockades created by the National Guard. After the theater reopened, managing director Ryan French said crowds were around half the size of what was previously expected.
Depressed ticket and concession sales caused the nonprofit to lose roughly half-a-million dollars in revenue and end its fiscal year in the red. The 6-decade-old organization cut three jobs and reduced hours for other employees, French said.
'Fear never left'
On a weekday in Minneapolis late last month, residents referred to the operation as "the surge" in passing and described major life events as happening before or after it. Weathered posters on a building facade memorialized Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two U.S. citizens killed by federal immigration officers during the operation. Houses and businesses around town displayed signs alerting immigration officers that they are not welcome on private property.
Many immigrant business owners depleted their life savings to keep stores afloat during the surge, according to Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis City Council member who represents part of Lake Street. Now, Chavez said the community's mom-and-pop shops may not survive a small emergency like a pipe burst or inclement weather event.
Recently, green shoots have emerged for these businesses. The Lake Street Council drew large crowds for World Cup viewing events and a recent "taco tour" food crawl, offering hope of customers returning to the area. In August, Advan Research found that year-over-year foot traffic growth for restaurants in Lake Street ZIP codes outperformed surrounding areas for the first time since Operation Metro Surge began.
But community members worry that immigration enforcement could ramp up again. While the volume of arrests by ICE in Minnesota has slowed compared with earlier this year, the national number in July rose to its highest level since Trump returned to office, according to the Deportation Data Project.
"For immigrants who are still here in Minneapolis and in the surrounding areas, that fear never left," said Miguel Hernandez, owner of Lito's Burritos on Lake Street. "They are operating at an intense level of caution still to this day."
The restaurateur still sees foot traffic plunge in the days after the news runs headlines about immigration enforcement. Some of his employees with work authorizations left the country due to fear over how they would be treated by federal officers. He sold his gray Chevrolet Tahoe after he said children began mistaking it for an ICE vehicle and running away.
For the past several Sundays, one of Daniel Hernandez's remaining Colonial Market stores has become home to a pop-up market where immigrant entrepreneurs sell their products. The owner said he invites Minneapolis police officers to patrol during the weekly event, drawing on a belief that the presence of local law enforcement with body cameras would deter ICE agents.
But Daniel Hernandez said the pop-up's traffic boost may not be enough for that location to survive.
The grocer could be evicted later this month, he said, after falling behind on rent as a result of lost sales during and after the surge. Colonial Market has raised more than $3,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to help keep the doors open.
"During the storm, you can feel the winds. But once the storm is over, all that you see is destruction," he said. "That's what happened here."

document fetched 2026-10-08 02:56 · canonical https://cnbc.com/2026/10/07/ice-raids-local-economies.html