Ana Nubia Duin started the Tuesday after Inauguration Day with fear. She made phone calls to her local police department after hearing rumors about Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, she said. That day, they were just rumors.
“People, like, if they see a police car in a business, they're saying immediately, 'It's ICE,'" said Duin, co-owner of La Mega KC, and a host for the Spanish radio station.
Since President Donald Trump called for local law enforcement to "perform the functions of immigration officers," a wave of fear among the Hispanic community has swept across the country, from New York, to Los Angeles, and here, in the middle of the country, too.
That fear seeps into the economy.
Duin regularly catches up with local businesses she patronizes, but those conversations have been different lately, she said. She heard from the owner of a local Hispanic grocery that people were starting rumors about how the security officer the store regularly employs is an ICE agent.
“Their sales have been down because of it,” Duin said, “because people are not going to the stores like they usually would.”
The radio host has gone from talking on air about community events and trendy restaurants to becoming a hub for other kinds of information. She is holding panels with local law enforcement agents, attorneys and advocacy organizations.
Her role in the community is not the only that has shifted.
Axel Fuentes is the executive director of the Rural Community Workers Alliance, an organization that advocates for the rights of working immigrants and refugees in rural communities.
The workers he helps are used to receiving training on labor rights, but since the inauguration, they have been receiving training on what to do when interacting with law enforcement.
“There are a lot of guys who have told me, ‘No, I don’t want to even go to Walmart anymore, because I don’t know if the police is going to stop me,’” Fuentes said in Spanish. “So I don’t blame them, because they do not want to put themselves out there.”
“In fact, I’ve been asked, ‘Bring me maseca,’” Fuentes added, referring to a type of corn flour, “‘bring me some eggs.’’”
Acceptance affects economies
In Missouri, Hispanic workers make up 5.3% of the labor force, according to 2021 data from the Census Bureau.
When the workforce does not feel safe or integrated, economies suffer, Corinne Valdivia said. Valdivia is a University of Missouri researcher who studied Latino immigrants in the rural Midwest in 2015.
Part of the study focused on the “sustainable livelihoods framework,” a concept that relates a community’s well-being to its work productivity. The study showed how Latinos, as newcomers to rural communities, faced the challenge of being accepted, especially as they encountered microaggressions and discrimination. This did not stop them from holding jobs, but it did exclude them from comfortably adapting to the larger economic system.
“Basically, the community climate that is negative towards newcomers or immigrants has a negative effect on their participation in the economy,” Valdivia said in an email.
The concept isn’t new, Valdivia said. One participant in the 2015 study said the arrival of ICE agents was a monthly occurrence in their town.
Living day-to-day with uncertainty
In a rural Missouri town filled with Hispanic-owned businesses, people are noticing a local change.
Some details about the town and individual residents have been withheld to protect the identities of people with an undocumented status.
A "tiendita" here is filled with Mexican goodies and essential household items. It is a business where Hispanics tend to go for money orders and sending checks to their home countries.
The woman at the cash register said business has been down since the new administration took over. She has heard rumors of ICE raids from social media.
People are no longer making money exchanges, she said. People used to come in and conduct their regular business. Now they don’t. She used one word to describe why: “Fear.”
Another community member said she has not been going out as often since Trump came into office.
She is a grandmother of two who was walking around the block with her two grandchildren. All three were holding "paletas," and the ice cream from the frozen treats was dripping from the faces of her grandchildren.
As she wiped pink ice cream drops off her granddaughter's cheek, the woman said she didn’t want to imagine what it would be like for the child to see her grandmother in the back of a police car getting deported.
Immigrants underpin workforce
Agriculture contributed nearly $94 billion to the state's economy as of 2021, according to the is Missouri Department of Agriculture.
Fuentes said the majority of the agriculture workers he serves are immigrants. Most of those workers are Hispanic, along with some Congolese and Burmese immigrants.
Carrying out mass deportations not only harshly affects Hispanic communities, but also has consequences for other communities, Fuentes said.
“You don't mess with the animals and the fields,” Fuentes said, “because there, we are left hungry.”
The current political rhetoric around immigrants doesn’t just affect the Hispanic community. It has an impact on the immigrant community at large, Fuentes said, affecting the state’s workforce.
Immigrants accounted for around 5.5% of the workforce in Missouri as of 2023, according to Census Bureau data.
The industries with the most immigrants are educational services and health care and social assistance, and manufacturing.
Missouri sees ICE activity
Media outlets have reported ICE raids in Missouri. In the Kansas City area, 12 employees were removed from their workplace without a warrant, KSHB reported. In the St. Louis area, ICE made impromptu arrests of three people who were released shortly after, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Gabriela Ramirez-Arellano is the co-founder of STLJuntos, a nonprofit in St. Louis focused on language access for the Spanish-speaking community. She has plans to open a restaurant and says the ICE raids have added extra stress for her as an aspiring business owner.
"Let’s say an employee gets taken away," she said. “How long will they hold them? What’s going to happen to his kids at school? What’s going to happen to his wife, his house, his car and the business owner who relied on him to help sustain the business?"
Ramirez-Arellano urged others to consider what it means for all of Missouri if part of the state’s workforce is scared to work and a segment of consumers is scared to shop.
'Know your rights'
Ramirez-Arellano helped build a website called STLJuntos, which provides information about where to find local immigration attorneys and how to handle interaction with ICE agents. The information is all in Spanish.
Fuentes is also a community resource for immigrant rural workers who seek information about their rights. He has partnered with the Advocates for Immigrant Rights, an organization based in the Kansas City area. He has used the group's educational materials to keep his community informed.
Today, he continues to disperse “know your rights” flyers around the towns he serves.
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