Rice Street community and businesses feel impact of ICE
What's happening on Rice Street?
The impact of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been felt over the past year on Rice Street, a major thoroughfare that stretches north and south along the east edge of Roseville. But the surge of ICE agents in the last several weeks has the business and residential community along Rice Street especially on high alert. Sales are down and businesses are struggling, while many usual customers and employees are staying home.
“It’s a disaster for our local economy and it needs to stop,” Kim O’Brien, Executive Director for the Rice & Larpenteur Alliance, said in an interview. O'Brien is also an executive of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce.
Many businesses along Rice Street have received visits from ICE recently, with no warrants presented, O’Brien said. She described an incident when dozens of ICE agents visited a thrift store. They walked around the store and entered the break room and back office. ICE has made visits to local restaurants too.
“It seemed more like—I'll just say it like I see it. It sounds more like an intimidation exercise,” O’Brien said.
Community members have told her firsthand accounts of ICE knocking on residential doors. Someone she trusts described witnessing a pedestrian being detained by ICE while walking on a sidewalk. She does not know how many people ICE has detained along Rice Street. Local law enforcement doesn't know either, because the federal government is not communicating with local police departments.
The neighborhood around Rice Street and Larpenteur Avenue is home to many immigrants and immigrant-owned businesses. There are large communities of Latino, Hmong, Karen, and Nepali people living, working, and owning businesses in that area.
“Many of our local businesses are reporting a significant loss of sales. Not only are the people who work there and run these businesses impacted directly from being afraid to come to work and do their jobs, but the customers and many people who frequent our business are from immigrant communities who are afraid to come out,” O’Brien said.
She ate at a local restaurant recently that is now having to employ full-time security at the front door to let people in after experiencing a visit from ICE.
“They just had two young women, in their late teens, early 20s working and they were faced with the prospect of asking these armed men in military gear to leave and they were very, very afraid,” O’Brien said.
Now, the security guards monitor the door and walk the employees to and from their cars.
“I will just remind you that these are workers and residents of our community who are here legally and working legally,” O’Brien said.
Maichee Xiong, Administrative Manager at the Rice & Larpenteur Alliance, said she was recently visiting local businesses to hand out Know Your Rights fliers.
“I’m not quite the protester, but I’m the person who would like to give out resources to people who should know what to do,” Xiong said. She’s connected with the employees and business owners of immigrant businesses to hear how things are going.
“They’re all really struggling because people with citizenship and without citizenship are not coming out. They’re really suffering and people are scared,” Xiong said. She said she’s seen a marked increase of vehicles with dark tinted windows that look like ICE around Rice and Larpenteur lately.
It’s not just immigrant-owned or BIPOC-owned businesses that are struggling. White-owned businesses are experiencing a significant loss of sales too.
“Behind every white-owned business there are usually immigrant employees. So those businesses are hurting from people not feeling safe to come to work,” O’Brien said.
Since the community is largely people of color, they are the drivers of the economy and the people working and spending money at the businesses on Rice Street. Without the usual foot traffic and with workers feeling unsafe to leave home, the owners of many family-owned businesses are working around the clock to cover shortages and do everything they can to stay open.
How the Rice & Larpenteur Alliance is Helping
The Rice & Larpenteur Alliance was set up to help revitalize and support the area through the collaborative effort of the Cities of Maplewood, Roseville, and Saint Paul, and Ramsey County. It is staffed by the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and led by a volunteer board of residents, business owners, nonprofit leaders, development partners, philanthropists, and government representatives.
Now, they are trying to figure out how to help the community navigate the impacts of immigration enforcement. So far, they’ve mainly been arranging meetings between local elected officials and small business owners to share experiences and ideas. They are also providing educational opportunities by connecting the business community with trainings and resources to learn about their rights.
On Friday, Jan. 16 O’Brien had lunch with all the local chamber executives, including Twin Cities North Chamber and Saint Paul Area Chamber, among others. These are the primary chambers of commerce that serve the Roseville area. The group discussed the current situation and what they could be doing to support struggling businesses.
“It's such a confusing and chaotic time. So there's always this question of what role can we play as business and community supporting organizations and how do we be most helpful. I think that all institutions are asking themselves that right now. All of them are in active listening mode and just trying to support their communities,” O’Brien said.
A local businessowner told her that the best way to support them is to encourage people to go out to eat and shop local, while being sensitive to the fact that many businesses are short-staffed and people are experiencing trauma both personally and professionally.
Other business owners have shared how the community is stepping up to support them in big ways, including standing up to ICE agents and asking them to leave a local restaurant on Rice St. She has also heard about residents organizing grocery delivery, fundraising, and doing laundry for vulnerable people who can’t leave their homes. She also is aware that school staff and parents are banding together to support school communities.
“We need to be clear about the rights of all people and not shy away from the fact that we live in a free democratic society where this kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen,” O’Brien said.
The Rice & Larpenteur Alliance has a broad network of volunteers which they call on for neighborhood clean-up days, planting flowers, and events. They haven’t yet mobilized these volunteers related to immigration enforcement response, but O’Brien said if they needed to call on them to support a local business, they could.
Over the past several years, RLA has been building trust with the community and building pathways for communication and resource-sharing which they can draw from during a crisis like this.
"There's already a group of individuals and an institution that is there to share resources, to care, to make phone calls, to build connections, and to address the issue. This is a crisis and we've had crises before," O'Brien said. "That's the beauty and the importance of having an established community-based organization."
Learn More
The community is invited to the RLA Annual Community Gathering on March 5 from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m to learn about the Rice & Larpenteur Alliance and how to get involved. Food will be provided. The location is to be determined.
Anyone who is interested in getting involved or supporting RLA is invited to visit the website:
Contributing Writer
