Small businesses across the Twin Cities are suffering and owners say ‘Metro Surge’ could be worse than Covid-19
A man walked into Soleil Ramirez’s restaurant last month and started to ask strange questions: How many people do you have on staff? Why are you so small? “Stuff nobody asks,” she said.
The man then started talking loudly into his phone. “I’m here doing a dip in a restaurant. There’s not a lot of people here, so I don’t know if it’s worth coming,” Ramirez recalled him saying. The encounter left her unnerved.
Ramirez has owned and run Crasqui, a Venezuelan restaurant, in St Paul, Minnesota, since 2023. Though she never got confirmation – the man left once it became clear restaurant staff were concerned about his presence – she concluded he was likely a federal immigration officer in plainclothes.
“It’s terrifying. All my employees are legal. I’m 100% legal,” said Ramirez, a political refugee from Venezuela who moved to the US in 2016. “But that doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
